Economics: the Outtakes
by VO1
Summary: Outtake scenes from Economics, I posted them at LJ but I think like 5 people actually read it there, so I'm putting it here! M ones are at Livejournal only. Characters and themes vary, but all set in the "Economics" universe with those characters.
1. Fly Like Paper, Get High Like Planes

**_Fly Like Paper, Get High Like Planes_**

**_Setting: Post-Economics (only by a little)  
_**

"This trip brought to you by Valium."

She didn't laugh at that joke, just like she hadn't laughed when he suggested checking their daughter in as a third bag, which would have only cost them fifteen bucks rather than full fare, or when he cracked about smuggling cocaine in Aja's _Dora the Explorer_ backpack when going through security screening, barely out of earshot of the TSA employee.

"That's not funny!" She hissed through clenched teeth, gripping the strap of her carryon hard enough to whiten her knuckles. "What if they heard you?"

"They didn't hear me. Plus, I'm not a cocaine smuggler."

"They don't know that! They would've taken you to a special room and interrogated you for hours and then—" Her voice trembled as she whispered the last sentence. "We would've missed _our flight_."

"Their flight" was significant on so many levels. When the invite had been made, and Makoto had determined that come hell or high water, she was making the trip, by any and all means necessary, they had sat down to work out the logistics late into the night. Noah had explored an alternate route: Amtrak, perhaps, and then some sort of boat, but the length of time, especially with Aja, and the cost, proved to be insurmountable odds. So instead, he worked on making the experience as easy on her as possible.

There were a lot of ducks to set in a row.

Nonstop was essential; there was no way she could handle multiple takeoffs and landings, and the less time spent in an airport, the better. Major carriers only. Her parents had died on an Airbus, so a Boeing was necessary, and the bigger, the better. Economy cabin: first class had only two adjacent seats, and she would either have to sit alone or with Aja. After a lot of digging, he managed to book their unmatchable flight.

He reached for her arm, and then ducked sideways to pull Aja out of the way of a beeping electric cart that was bearing down on her. Foolishly he had hoped that the bustle of a major hub would tamper her anxiety, but it seemed to only make it worse. "Do you want to take a Valium?"

"Not yet." She fiddled with the buttons of her sweater, pulling a thread hanging off of a button and twining it around her finger. "I can wait until we get to the gate."

At the gate, they settled on the ground against the window, facing the tarmac. Aja was delighted. "Daddy! Look a him!"

Why she was pointing at a grizzled man with a mustache zipping around on a baggage cart, he would never know. "I see."

She turned her impossibly large, brown eyes on him. "Which. Which our plane?"

He had been the one to explain to Aja that they were going on a trip, and would be riding in airplane, which was going to be fun. But, she would have to be good and sit down for a long time, and not be loud because there were going to be people on the plane that liked it quiet. How long? About five hours. How long was that? Well, it was like watching _Finding Nemo_ five times in a row. Yes, she had never done that before. How many was five? Uh, not a lot. But when they landed, they would be in Sint Maarten, and she could go to the beach and build sand castles and see the Nemos in person and go to a butterfly farm and it was hot and sunny and she would like it very much.

He didn't tell her the last part, where she would spend a full twenty-four hours with Aunty Serena and Uncle Darien, so that he and Makoto could barricade themselves in their suite and have ungodly amounts of freaknasty sex. The weeks leading up to this trip had been so nerve-wracking that there hadn't been any of that, much less of the freaknasty variety.

Noah had resisted asking the question for as long as he could. "Are you OK?"

She couldn't even force a smile as he rubbed her back gently. "Stop asking that. I don't want Aja to hear." She was determined to keep her fear from her daughter, lest she pass it on unintentionally.

"Ready for the Valium?"

"Oh yes." She had been prescribed both Valium and Xanax, and had been taking the latter to help her sleep. A few swallows from a water bottle, and she was on her way to artificially induced serenity.

"Daddy! Is da plane?"

His gaze followed her finger. "Uh, no, that's not our plane. Our plane is, uh." He racked his brain, trying to remember what Continental's colors were. "Our plane is blue. And white. And yellow, I think."

"That?"

"No, that's blue and white, very good, but that's an AirTran." Next to him, Makoto emitted a small whimper. No doubt that airline had come up on her Internet search of plane crashes in the last ten years.

There was one last hurdle to overcome, when boarding was announced for passengers with young children. She grabbed his wrist before he could stand, the unhinged, wild fear surfacing fully in her deep green eyes. "What if something happens?" she whispered, her voice wavering dangerously. "What if we all died in a crash? All of us? The baby, too, oh my God, we brought the baby with us…"

He used the arm that wasn't holding Aja's backpack to grab her and pull her to him, pressing her body so tightly that he could feel the tremors that wracked her limbs. "Makoto. Stop it. That's not going to happen."

She swallowed. "What if—"

"It's not going to happen," he said, more forcefully. "What's going to happen is that we're going to breath recycled air and sit uncomfortably in tiny seats for five and a half hours. And you're going to fall asleep right after takeoff, and Aja's going to get bored at the two hour mark and start whining, and I'm going to eat really salty peanuts and drink really expensive beer and watch some terrible movie while my legs cramp up. Then we're going to land in a Caribbean island with nothing but blue water and white beaches, and stay in a five star resort that we don't have to pay for, and overeat and get sunburned, and somewhere in there we have to take Aja to the butterfly farm because I'm dumb and mentioned it to her. And she'll probably end up squishing a bunch of them on accident." He leaned over and kissed the corner of her eyebrow. "We're going to be _fine_."`

She wrapped her arms around him. "You promise?"

"I promise."

They gave Aja the window seat, with Noah in the middle, and Makoto in the aisle. "Can I drink alcohol?" The Valium was already slurring her words as she slipped on noise canceling headphones.

"I don't think that's a good idea." He squeezed her hand as the plane started taxiing down the runway. On his other side, Aja squealed and pointed out of the window to the same airport worker she had seen before.

Makoto tried her best to reassuringly smile. "This is her first plane ride. Make her love it."

He tried his best; his hand clenched in his wife's the entire time. Aja held her fuzzy dice up to the window so it could "see" the ground grow smaller and smaller below them, until they were flying above a cottony layer of clouds.

It ended up that he didn't keep most of his promises.

Makoto didn't fall asleep until they had been at cruising altitude for a half an hour. Aja got bored five minutes after that, and developed a new obsession with the coffin-like airplane bathrooms and their vacuum flush. He set up the portable DVD player for her, but discovered that he had stuck _Dazed and Confused_ in by accident instead of _Yo Gabba Gabba!_, an epic fail on his end. He ate salty trail mix, drank really expensive 7 & 7s, got neck cramps like a mofo, and did his best to entertain a whining three year old for the next four, hellish hours.

When they landed, he woke her by plunking Aja on her lap. "Mommy. Mommy," she chirped, pressing her face against her mother's neck.

Makoto blinked, coming to. Noah laughed at the stray curls that fanned out from underneath her headphones. "We're on the ground."

"Really?" She yawned and stretched one hand behind her as other travelers filed down the aisle and off the plane.

"Yes, really. We're here. You did great, babe; you were so brave."

Blinking, she pulled her daughter into a hug and kissed her curly head. "Not really. This trip was brought to you by Valium."


	2. Squeak

_**Squeak**_

_**Set during "Economics"; a true outtake**_

A dog was barking outside, probably the same one he saw earlier in the day when they pulled into the Aino's driveway: a small, ratty thing yipping behind the neighbor's fence.

It had now been barking for seventeen consecutive minutes. Kevin knew this because his exhausted eyeballs were staring into the bright red numerals of the digital alarm clock placed inches from his face. There wasn't much space in Mina's old bedroom, especially since her mother had started using it for storage, and the nightstand and bed were shoved closely together.

He was stuck on the outside. Sleeping on the inside edge against the wall made him claustrophobic.

The dog kept barking. He wondered if he could borrow one of Jason's baseballs and try beaning it from the second floor window. Hell, Jason would probably help him.

Sighing, he turned on his other side and crushed half of his girlfriend's body in the process.

"Ow! You're on me."

"Sorry." They adjusted, each trying to find a comfortable position on the cramped double bed. It had been big enough when she was a teenager, and sleeping alone, but now that they were used to so much more room, it was like trying to sleep on a domino. Kevin stared at the dim outline of the Rubbermaid boxes full of Mrs. Aino's scrapbooking supplies and wondered if Raye and Jason were experiencing the same problem in Jason's old room.

There was an upside to sleeping on a tiny bed: almost constant body contact.

"Stop it!"

She retracted her hand. "Why?"

"We're in your parents' house!"

He knew she was pouting in the darkness. "You didn't care when we were in _your _parents' house!"

"That's different." He shifted again, and the mattress springs groaned from the slight movement. "They can hear us."

"They can _not._ Fine then, go to sleep, you big wuss."

He reached over and turned the clock around. The dog outside was still barking, and now Bagels was giving an occasional tired "woof" back. "I'm trying. Move over."

Mina scooted and shut her eyes, willing her brain to shut down so that she could start falling asleep. Ten minutes later, a restless, prickling current shot down the left side of her body. She flipped over, jostling Kevin's body and whipping him in the face with her hair. He started fidgeting. "Sorry."

"Hmm."

She inched her face towards his. "Are you sleeping?"

"No."

"Were you getting close?"

"Yes."

"Oh. Sorry." Mina rolled onto her right side and tried to find a place to put her bottom arm, finally sliding it under his neck. He grunted and turned his head, pinning it in place. "Ow my arm! Can you stop moving?"

"Can you stop talking?"

"I'll stop talking when you stop moving."

"You're talking more than I'm—"

His words were cut off as a familiar, rhythmic squeaking noise was heard faintly through the door.

"Oh my God!" Mina pulled her head up and listened closer. "Is that--?"

Kevin pulled his pillow over his face. "Great."

Mina let her head drop back down. "See? My brother's not all hung up about having sex in our parents' house."

His voice was muffled as he spoke through the pillow. "That's because your dad won't kill his own son. I'm fair game."

"Whatever."

The dog had finally stopped barking; the squeaking continued, picking up in volume and frequency in the fresh silence.

Kevin tried to scoot away from the edge and smushed Mina into the wall. "You lived with them. How long does this usually take?"

"I don't know! I didn't have my ear pressed to the door when they were doing it!" She sighed. "Just ignore it, they'll, you know…_finish_ soon."

Ten minutes later the squeaking was still audible, accompanied by the occasional knock of something heavy against the headboard. Worse, a soft female moan joined in at regular intervals.

Now they were both awake, their eyes wide open as they stared at the ceiling. Mina stated the obvious in a quiet whisper. "They're not done."

"What do you want me to do? Shoot them with a garden hose?"

"Yell at them."

"You yell at them! It's your brother!"

"Yeah, but I don't want my parents to wake up," she fretted. "I wouldn't care if it was just Jason, but Raye'll get all embarrassed and get mad at me." She turned her head. "Do you still have some Ambien?"

"Yes."

"Should we take some?"

Before he could answer, they heard a long, breathy sigh, and the squeaking tapered and finally stopped, leaving the house in near-silence.

The dog next door started yapping again.

Mina huffed and resumed her search for a comfortable position. "I'm so yelling at Raye tomorrow. Can you move your leg?"

"Move it where?"

"Never mind. Get the Ambien."

The next morning, when all four were sitting around the breakfast table and pouring cereal, Mina waited until her mother went to let the dog out before leaning towards her brother. "Jason—"

He cut her off. "Is it possible for you two to take it to the floor tonight?"

Mina frowned. "What?"

Raye piped in. "We hear you hornballs going at it last night like rabbits! Can you take a night off so that I can sleep, please? We're supposed to take pictures today, and I don't think I can cover these bags under my eyes. Did you bring your Studio Fix? 'Cause I'm going to need it."

Jason was scowling. "Seriously, guys. Keep it down. I think the whole neighborhood could hear you bone."

Mina waited until her mother crossed the room and disappeared into the pantry. "It wasn't us!" She hissed under her breath.

"Yes it was!" Jason insisted. "You were even moaning! I could hear you through my pillow!"

"Jason, I swear to God it wasn't us!"

He turned to Kevin. "Really?"

Kevin simply nodded, his coffee mug frozen halfway to his mouth.

Jason sat back. "Well, it wasn't us. And if it wasn't you…"

His voice trailed off as his mother returned and busied herself at the stove. "Anyone want bacon?"

"I do!" Mr. Aino sing-songed as he entered the kitchen. "Morning, kids."

They mumbled in response, and four pairs of disbelieving eyes watched as he made his way to the stove and hugged his wife from behind. She giggled and swatted at him as he placed a quick kiss on her cheek.

The four at the table whipped their heads around to look at each other, their eyes wide with sudden realization. A second passed with no movement.

"AH!" Mina jumped up and ran out of the room as Jason made a gagging noise and shoved away his cereal bowl hard enough to splash milk across the table. He was on his feet in the next second, and ran out of the kitchen on his sister's heels. They could hear them screaming and groaning hysterically from the living room.

Mrs. Aino slid a plate of bacon on the half-empty table. "What's wrong with them?"

The two non-Ainos locked eyes across the table, unsure of what to say.

Mr. Aino grinned and snatched a piece of bacon, winking at them as he bit into it. "More for us, right guys?"

In the next room, the two siblings continued their frantic tirade.

Next door, the neighbor's dog started barking.


	3. No Sex in the Champagne Room

_**No Sex in the Champagne Room**_

_**Sequel to "Squeak"**_

Apparently, the memory of parental intimacy was still stuck in his mind, because it took a helleva lot of convincing (and rubbing) on Mina's part to even get him unwound enough to kiss her. "No one is home, I swear," she whispered, her fingers dancing up and down his warm erection.

"Are you sure?" They were the only ones who had slept in, besides Bagels, and they had heard Jason's car start up and drive away through the hazy fog of sleep.

"I'm positive." The house was silent, save for the ratty dog next door that had resumed barking at any and all objects within its line of vision. She tightened her grip, and he swiftly pulled her on top of him and crushed his lips on hers.

She kept his t-shirt on, one of her favorite things to sleep in due to its softness and his smell, and pushed down on his prone body, making him gasp. She sat up, gently riding, keeping the tempo slow enough to barely squeak the box springs, squeezing her legs together on either side of his body.

He tried to rock her faster; she stiffened her hips and forced him slow again.

Then a little faster.

A little more.

She pulled one leg up and was about to start pounding away when her bedroom door popped open and her mother entered, a laundry basket balanced on her hip.

Mina screamed, grabbed the comforter, and frantically pulled it around their bodies. "MOM! GET OUT!"

Mrs. Aino opened her laundry hamper and started pulling clothes out. "Oh! You guys are busy. I'll just be a second; I just need a bit more to start a full load."

"MOM!" She wrestled with the blankets and tried to unfuck herself off of Kevin's body without causing permanent damage. From the looks of it, he was trying to flatten himself against the mattress in a vain effort to disappear.

Her mother gave them a quick glance. "Honey, make sure you wash those sheets when you're finished; Aunt Stacy's visiting next week and she's going to stay in your room. Oh, you can throw some of your towels in there, too, and don't use too much detergent because the new washer is high efficiency and doesn't need as much--oh hi, Kevin, your face can get so red, sweetie. Remember to use hot water, OK, and hang it outside--"

"MOM PLEASE GO!"

She readjusted the laundry basket. "Oh I'm sorry, I'm probably 'killing the mood' aren't I? OK, well, you two have fun, and don't forget about the towels. When Jason gets home see if he has any he wants to wash, too." She closed the door gently behind her, but not before giving them a brief wave.

It was hard to tell who was more horrified. Kevin's face was redder than a fire truck. "You said no one was home!"

Mina leaned her head back and desperately tried to get catch her breath. He was still inside of her, and she was notably impressed at his ability to stay hard, even after all that.

Maybe it was the adrenaline.

She was just about to say fuck it, and pick up where they had left off, when the door opened again. "Mina, while you're at it, can you do the bathmats and maybe the—"

"GET OUT GET OUT!"

"Sorry, sorry…" She shut the door again.


	4. Get Out of My House

_**"Get Out of My House" **_

_**Set during "Economics"  
**_

"God, you are such a pain in the ass sometimes!" she hissed softly, gathering up her keys and phone and shoving them in her purse. Raye hovered in the doorway, impatiently drumming her fingers against the frame.

He didn't look up from the papers on the table. "Just-get out of here please. Go. I just—I really can't stand the sight of you right now."

She did. Raye noticed that she didn't slam the door, or stomp, or punch the elevator button like a prizefighter. In fact, she was entirely too calm about everything. She waited until they were out on the sidewalk before speaking.

"Is he still all butthurt over--?"

"Yes." Mina pulled a tube of lip gloss out of her pocket and quickly swiped her lips.

Raye pulled her coat tighter. "You know, I have absolutely fucking _broken_ Jason for less."

Mina smiled and took her friend's arm. "It's OK. I have to let it slide; it was my cat that peed in his briefcase."

"So?"

"Well, it was because I didn't change the litter box in like, a week. It's sort of my fault."

"That's where you're wrong," Raye said emphatically. "You make him think it's his fault."

Mina sighed. "My poor brother!"


	5. Not Mine, But Ours

**Title: Not Mine, but Ours**

Raye did not miss her mother.

Really—she didn't. She never knew the lady. The last time they had met, Raye was four years old, and the person in question was dying a slow, heavily medicated death. She was too young to formulate a lasting memory of an adult woman who was unconscious most of the time.

Personally, she found it very annoying when people would discover this fact about her life, and automatically stumble all over themselves apologizing, like they were personally responsible for leukemia or something. "You must miss her terribly!"

They would crow, referencing the twenty plus years of memories they shared with their own mothers.

No. Not exactly.

Raye did not know her mother. She did not miss her mother.

She missed—no; you can't miss what you never had. She _wanted _a mother. It didn't have to be hers. Hers was dead, and that was that.

* * *

Because of that, for a long time, Raye didn't know how to act in front of Mrs. Aino.

The slightly disconcerting feeling didn't happen at first meet; in fact, for a long time, everything was perfectly fine. Mrs. Aino was Mina's mother: a blonde, still slim lady about fifty or so years old; a high school art teacher who wore white button down shirts and comfortable flats with her jeans. Nothing more than that.

When Raye would spend holidays or vacations at their home, Mina's mother was always buffered with the comfortable balance of Mr. Aino, and sometimes, Mina's brother, cementing her place as just one of the four other people that made up the small, wonderfully complete Aino family.

Mina's mother remained as a voice on the phone, a brief mention in conversation, and sometimes, a fussy presence when she would drop by their apartment, bringing groceries and toiletries to her oft-broke daughter. Sometimes she would stay for a day or two, and Raye would politely pass on their invites to lunches, museum trips, and shopping excursions, and was unyielding in the face of Mina's constant wheedling. The unspoken message, which Mina was too obtuse to pick up on, was that she wanted her friend to have that time with her own mother, without the extra presence to intrude on the memory.

It took a while, but Mina eventually deduced the reason for Raye's polite evasion. The next time her mother visited, she practically dragged Raye by her arm out of the apartment, blithely ignoring the other girl's protests and threats.

She hung back shyly during the shopping trip—very unlike her—and bought a blouse after Mrs. Aino reached over and adjusted the fit under Raye's arms.

She could not remember ever being touched like that.

She tried on several more shirts just to feel Mina's mother deftly plucking at the clothing. Later that night, alone in her room, she wept piteously, hotly ashamed of the childish longing she had felt when the older woman touched her.

Mrs. Aino remained a distant presence in Raye's life, until one night, she drank way too much, and let her suppressed crush on Mina's brother manifest itself in a sloppily executed seduction that almost ended in fatal embarrassment.

Thank God it did not.

Days later, she kissed Jason in the front seat of his Chevelle in the dead of night and changed everything about her life in a single moment, including her tenuous relationship with Mrs. Aino, who of course, in addition to being Mina's mother, was Jason's mother too.

Obviously.

* * *

On a Sunday in May, _that_ Sunday in May, Raye was home alone, working through her usual routine of the Times, her coffee, and an entire afternoon free for her annual ritual of ignoring the conflicting feeling of wanting something that she had trained herself carefully not to care about. She was interrupted by a knock at the door, expecting to find Mina freaking out and flustered because she had forgotten her wallet—again—but a different Aino was waiting in the hallway.

"Oh, uh, hi," Raye said, opening the door wider. "You just missed Mina."

Jason's mother shook out her umbrella and set a rain-speckled paper sack on the counter. "It's coming down," she exhaled, pulling off her coat.

Raye shuffled her newspaper around nervously; she had never been alone with Mrs. Aino before, and she was thrown. The polite thing, she thought, would be to offer her some coffee, or tea, _tea, _because didn't middle-aged women like tea, better? She didn't think she had any tea; she was a coffee drinker. Maybe she could run our for some, and that could be her excuse to get out of Mrs. Aino's presence until she could locate Mina or Jason.

"I was going to make dinner tonight, you know, as a surprise. I told Jason about it."

"Oh."

"You wouldn't mind helping me?"

Raye rubbed her palms together nervously. "Oh, of course not."

"Thanks, dear. Do you have any lettuce?"

The crisper drawer was primarily used as an alcohol-storage unit, but Raye unearthed a ragged head of iceberg from the back. "It's a little wilted," she admitted apologetically, placing the sad green hunk on the counter.

Mrs. Aino made a small "humph" and started filling the kitchen sink with cold water. "I think we can save it." She started unpacking food items out of the grocery bag. "Do you like snapper?"

Raye stalled, not wanting to admit that she and Mina existed on a diet of Vitamin Water and Luna bars to keep in Sugar-form. Mothers didn't like hearing that kind of stuff, well, at least, she presumed they didn't. At least the ones on TV didn't. "I—yeah! I love it."

"Is seared OK? Or do you want to broil it?" She pulled out Tupperware containers full of different spices and lined them up on the counter.

"Oh, uh, either way. I like it both ways." She leaned against the counter and felt like the world's token idiot, silently furious at herself for not knowing how to converse with this lady. She had constituents come into the office all the time that were the same age as Mrs. Aino, and she had no problem charming the Talbots off of them. Why couldn't she just turn it on here, right now? The pressure was making her sick with unease; she wanted to run to her room and slam the door and remain there until Mrs. Aino went away.

"Seared, then. It's quicker." Mrs. Aino unwrapped a paper parcel, revealing several creamy pale fish fillets. "Do you have any olive oil?"

Actually, she did, but it was in the bathroom; Makoto had tipped them off to the trick of using it as an inexpensive, effective eye makeup remover. She ran to retrieve it, and when she returned, the radio that sat on the window ledge was turned to NPR, and Mrs. Aino was gingerly poking at the fillets. "Raye, feel this, tell me what you think."

"Uh." She looked down at the white, glistening flesh and hesitated. "Feel it where?"

"Oh here, like this." She picked up Raye's hand and pressed her finger on the fillet. Unlike Mina's constantly paint-splattered fingers, Raye's nails were always buffed and perfect, and long enough to accidentally leave crescent-shaped gouges in Jason's back in the heat of the moment.

"What am I feeling for?"

Mrs. Aino had her forehead wrinkled in concentration, her blond eyebrows kitting together, and Raye nearly laughed: she had seen that look before, usually in the final innings of a close White Sox game, or when the Chevelle's engine was making a mystery noise. "Not too squishy? If you fingerprint stays in the fish, it means it's going bad."

"I didn't know that," Raye said, giving the fillet another experimental tap.

"Hm. It was squishing a bit too much on this end. I wasn't sure. What do you think?"

Raye shrugged. "Will it kill us if we eat it?"

Mrs. Aino grinned, and she had definitely seen that smile before. She had never really looked at Mrs. Aino before, but now that she was in such close proximity, she could see how much Jason resembled his mother.

Raye wondered if she looked at all like the dead woman that she was supposed to care about. Her father had kept most of the photos.

"I doubt it will cause lasting damage." She popped open a container and started dumping spices into one of Mina's cereal bowls. "I've seen Jason eat things off the floor and he's still alive somehow. How's that lettuce?"

It was floating like a leafy buoy in the sink. "Um, it's still sort of wilted."

Mrs. Aino waved it off. "I have asparagus. Want to start that?"

"Um."

She was very good at picking up Raye's uncertainty. "Boil an inch of water. We'll steam it."

The asparagus was easy, as was chopping and cooking some red potatoes. They listened to the rest of "Car Talk" in near-silence, laughing together softly at the two men hollering on the radio. Mrs. Aino showed Raye how to sear fish without overdoing it, letting her do most of the handling. Only one ended up cracking in half. "Oh, shoot."

"Oh, don't worry about it. It won't look pretty, but you can't eat pretty. How's that lettuce doing now?"

Raye pulled it out of the sink with one hand. "Huh. It got kind of crispy."

Mrs. Aino smiled knowingly. "They perk up when you get them wet." She stopped suddenly, and her crystal blue eyes popped open to dinner-plate size. "Oh! Shoot, that didn't sound too good."

For the first time that afternoon, Raye's face stretched into an uncontrolled grin. "I won't tell."

"Good, if my kids were here, they wouldn't stop making fun of me. It's an unfortunate trait they get from their father."

Her laugh wasn't loud, but it was enough. "I know."

Mrs. Aino turned the heat on under a large skillet. "Well, just don't let Jason get away with too much. Push him back or he'll get out of control."

"Oh," Raye said, a glint in her eye. "I will."

"Good for you," Mrs. Aino moved the oil around in the skillet. "Do you like cooking, Raye?"

Busted. "I, um, I don't do a lot of it," she admitted, tearing the lettuce into salad pieces. "I never really learned."

Mrs. Aino shrugged. "Baking's more fun, I think. Everyone gets to admire your work for a bit longer. Next time we'll make snickerdoodles."

Raye methodically tore into the lettuce, and tried not to get too hopeful.

Jason's ringtone for his mother's phone was "Centerfield," which was funny, since for Raye's phone, it was the same song. His mother wiped her hands on a dishtowel before answering. "Jason's tied up with his band. He's not going to make it for dinner."

Raye frowned and made a mental note to chew him out later; that was pretty low to do to your mother on Mother's Day, especially since she spent the last few hours cooking. Her phone beeped with a text message from Mina.

_Sry cant make it! Start w/o me_

"Mina can't make it," she reported to Mrs. Aino, who was setting the table. "This is weird, but it looks like it's just you and me. They're not coming."

Jason and Mina's mother gave her a soft smile. "Honey, they were never coming." She pulled a bottle of wine out of the paper bag and started peeling the foil band off the cork. "Shall we eat?"


	6. By Request

Written for SM_Monthly May 2009 Challenge: Photograph

* * *

The lights wouldn't go on, and Jason didn't know why.

Swearing and hitting the breaker box didn't work, and if his roommate had been around, he probably would have tried swearing and hitting him, too, just for good measure. But they were all paid up on utilities, as far as he knew, and flipping all the circuit breakers was basically the endpoint of his knowledge of electrical systems.

Fuck the world.

Raye was sitting patiently on the couch in the living room, still wearing her coat, her arms wrapped around her body. The apartment was freezing, since the heat had gone out hours before, along with the power. Thankfully, they didn't have any pets that would have been inadvertently killed; in fact, maybe this incident would actually help with their slightly persistent mouse "problem". In actuality, a thorough cleaning would probably be much more effective in solving said "problem", as would securing open cereal boxes, but they hadn't been that motivated yet, and the mice didn't eat that much, really. The real issue was the amount that they shit, and where. Makoto had been around long enough to get used to the clutter, and even pitched in and cleaned the bathroom when the layer of soap scum in the shower got too much for her to bear. Once, she even changed the towels.

Raye, well, she had been to their place before, but never in this capacity. Or alone.

So much for "coming over to watch a movie." He was even going to let her pick, too, since he wasn't planning on paying a lick of attention to it in the first place. He would have gladly suffered through soul-crushing, sparkly vampire porn or three hours of Oliver Stone conspiracy tripe if it meant being curled up on the couch next to her.

Shit. He had even slipped Noah some cash to disappear for the night, and the lucky asshole was probably enjoying it very much at Makoto's place, which probably had such niceties as electricity and heat.

"I don't think there's anything you can do," Raye said, as she watched him unearth a variety of dusty candles from under piles of computer printouts and stuffed cabinets. "It looks like it's the whole block."

"Really?" He shook an almost-tapped Bic lighter and flicked it on. "How can you tell?"

She nodded her head towards the front window. "The streetlights are out." In the candlelight, she glowed.

"Oh." _No shit._ He probably would have noticed that coming in, if he hadn't been so focused on his dick. "Sorry."

She smiled at him, and for that moment, he couldn't feel the cold. "Don't apologize. You didn't do it."

"So," she started when he brought her the comforter off of his bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. "Looks like our plan got shot down. What do you want to do now?"

Jason inwardly groaned; this was probably the worst question ever posed in the history of humanity. Hours of his life had been wasted debating with girls, friends, roommates, and family members as to what they wanted to do. Usually it was followed with the inevitable: "I don't know, what do _you_ want to do?" and then that part was repeated over again in an endless cycle of circular hell until one party cracked and started shouting. He broke the pattern before it got started; his mouth speaking the words before his brain had a chance to assess the potential consequences.

"I want to be with you."

If the lights had been on, she would have seen him blush.

He would have instantly set himself on fire with the Bic if she had any other reaction than what she did, which was to settle in a nest on the couch and smile primly. "Well, you're already with me. Now what else should we do?"

Touch. Kiss. Grope. Take off clothes. Stay warm using nothing but their bodies and friction. Didn't they have Twister somewhere? He remembered buying Twister for some party that they threw, but the floor part got so filthy with spilled beer and tracked dirt that they either washed it or threw it away…or maybe neither. That would be perfect right now. "Uh…"

She stopped the eighteen-wheeler of horny musings by pointing across the room. "Hey I know. Why don't you play something?"

_Aw, yeah._ Oh wait, she was pointing to his guitar case. "Uh."

"Come on." She slid off the couch and pulled the case over to him. "Play me something."

Jason had horrendously attempted solos in public that had cost the fingers of musicians infinitely more talented than him more than once without hesitation, but this simple request made by the girl of his dreams was making his insides squirm with nerves. He would almost take the bar full of drunk townies screaming for "Free Bird" over this. "Uh…"

Her smile was challenging, this time. Her eyes glittered like dark jewels in the flickering light. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing," he said, crossing the room to sit next to her. "I'm just not prepared. I might suck."

She was giving him a look that made him think she could see right through his bullshit; if that was truly the case, maybe he hadn't been ahead of the game this entire time. "Jason, I've seen you play before. The first time I met you, Mina dragged me to that frat house that your band was playing at and you almost kicked your lead singer's ass for smashing your guitar."

"Oh yeah," he said, reaching down to open the snaps on the case. Mina had come to visit him at his college, and brought her roommate, the incomparable Raye Hino, with her. Too bad the first impression she got of him was tackling the pretentious lead singer after the jackass had ripped his guitar out of his hands and smashed it, Townshend-style, at the end of "Live Forever".

"Stop acting, I've seen you play before. You act like we're not friends."

That horrible f-word had no place here. His heart was hammering underneath his rib cage as his fingers started numbly fiddling with the tuning keys. "Are we friends?"

Now it was her turn to look embarrassed. "Of course we are. But we're also, um—" Her eyes fell to the floor as she waved it off, nearly extinguishing the candle that balanced on a stack of magazines. "Play something. Play something that reminds you of me."

As much as he wished to honor her request, Jason didn't think that she was ready to hear any of the songs that he had written about her; too soon, and the few that he had let Noah or Mina hear in private had been given the grade of "sucks". He entertained the comedy option, which would mean busting out with Tenacious D or something equally asinine, but the thought fluttered away when she looked at him again with those hypnotic eyes of hers, framed with dark lashes, her skin smooth and pale and her lips slightly parted. He wanted to taste her like heroin and die.

Instead, he tuned up and started strumming. "Are you sure you don't want to do something else?"

Those enchanting eyes took a turn in their sockets. "Jason, shut up and play already."

He did.

She probably didn't recognize the song; her musical tastes were unashamedly mainstream. He and Noah had accompanied her and Makoto to see some shitastic alternative band where every member had officially sanctioned Emo Hair and enough eyeliner to barely still qualify as heterosexual. It sounded different when played acoustic, especially the opening riff.

The candlelight flickering in the dark apartment made it look like the only place in the world. Jason bungled the first verse, but recovered quickly.

_So wild so free so far from me, you're all I want, you're my fantasy…_

A glimmer of recognition spread across her face; she started mouthing the words along with him.

_Look what you've done…I've got to have you…I don't want your…I don't need your…all I've got is your photograph…_

He finished, "It's not enough."

She slid off the couch and edged closer to him when he came to the second verse, wearing a half-smile an expression that could almost be described as "rapt". He continued.

_I'd be your lover, if you were there, put your hurt on me, if you dare._

_Such a woman, you got style, you make every man feel like a child…_

Now she was grinning outright, and it made him regret that this song was only four minutes long.

_Photograph…I don't want your…I don't need your…All I've got is your photograph…you've gone straight to my head._

Amazingly, he hit the high note without his voice cracking.

She crept closer during the bridge; his pulse started picking up, he could feel it thrumming against the sides of his neck. Somehow he kept enough brain function to keep singing.

_Oh, look what you've done, I want to touch you…_

At that last word, she leaned forward over his guitar and pressed her lips against his open mouth.

The music stopped as his fingers stopped and his heart leapt out of his body and landed across the room somewhere. She reached up and cupped his face with her hands, and the taste of her, the smell of her hair, the warmth of her skin was the only thing that existed in this moment, in this world. He slid the guitar around to his back as he pulled her closer and pressed her body against his, keeping enough control not to give in and throw her down on her back on the couch.

She made a low groan in the back of her throat, and he was gone.

He had her coat off, and was unzipping the side of her blouse, which for some insane reason was positioned under her arm instead of in a normal place, when they were interrupted by a shout from the hallway. "Hey! Music stopped!"

Jason jerked his head up; another delightful feature of this building, along with the mice, was the incredibly thin walls. Raye craned her neck. "What the—?"

"Come on!" the voice continued. It sounded like Elliott, the UPS worker and ex-serviceman who lived next door. "I've been sitting in the dark all night listening to my hair grow. Keep playing!"

"Yeah!" a female voice followed. Jason estimated that it was one of the three women that shared an apartment down the hall; all he knew about them that one worked for the newspaper and all three had shut down any attempt at flirting at the mailbox. "Is that 2C?"

"Yep!" Elliott's shouting was louder; he must have opened the door. "It's that blond kid with the frat-boy haircut and stupid t-shirts. Justin? James? Ah, hell, whatever your name is, how about some Jimmy Buffett?"

"No, Jack Johnson! Do you know 'Banana Pancakes'?"

More doors were opening in the hallway. "What about some Dead, man?" That must be Manny, the dreadlocked white kid from Jersey who smoked about an ounce of kind a week.

"FREE BIRD!" came the shout from the apartment above them.

Jason let his head drop to Raye's shoulder. "I don't believe this. Usually they're all yelling at me to shut up."

A tentative knock. "My daughter wants to know if you know any Jonas Brothers? Please?"

One hour, four Dead covers, two Jack Johnsons, one Nirvana, one Jason Mraz, three Buffetts that he couldn't avoid, and various other requests (minus "Free Bird") later, the lights came back on.

Jason cracked on his sore fingers as Raye held her frozen hands over the ancient radiator to thaw them out. "Can I ask you something?"

He began thinking of an apology for such a sucky date, one that began in the dark and ended with a horrific Jonas Brothers cover. "Sure."

Her eyes were smiling. "I want to know what it is about me that makes you think of eighties butt metal."

He could have easily gone into a litany of why Def Leppard quantified as a legitimate, influential pioneer of new wave hard rock/heavy metal, but instead he smirked and said, "At least it wasn't their stripper anthem." He strummed the opening chord. "Step inside, walk this way, you and me babe—"

He barely dodged the mousetrap thrown at his head, but had his senses back, thankfully, as she climbed into his lap and enveloped him in a kiss.


	7. Open to Interpretation

Written for SM_Monthly May 2009 Challenge: Tarot Card

* * *

The front door opened to reveal Mina, dressed in layers of dark blue with bright yellow circle earrings, and Kevin sporting a three-piece suit with a clear plastic raincoat over it. Raye's face fell.

"I told you to wear costumes, you killjoys!" She leaned in the doorway, pulling down the hem of her tiny skirt. She had picked what she deemed the "least offensive" of the usual slutty Halloween costumes, and "slutty gypsy" barely fit the bill. That and she liked wearing false eyelashes and head scarves. If only her friends would put in some effort…

Mina blinked. "I am in costume. I'm _Starry Night_. Get it?"

Raye rolled her eyes. "NO. You couldn't just stick a sheet over your head? Kevin?"

He silently held up an axe, a plastic guard over the clean, sharp edge and the Lowe's price tag still stuck to its handle.

"Oh!" She nodded in approval. "Shouldn't you be covered in splattered blood, too?"

"I don't do splattered blood. I got enough weird looks buying this thing as it was."

"I think they thought he was going to go and kill someone," Mina explained, smoothing her hair over her shoulder as she wandered into the party. "What's to drink?"

"Over there, you know where we keep it," Raye said, pointing towards the kitchen. She sat back down at the table, already littered with plastic cup, and picked up the card that she had left when she went to answer the door. "Where were we?"

Jesse, bravely sporting a Speedo and eight fake gold medals, had insisted on drinking his vodka tonic out of a real glass. "That one," he said, tapping a card.

Raye reached over and flipped it over. Jesse let out a piercing cry. "Oh shit, the devil card! I'm fucked!"

"No, no," Raye tried to calm him down. "It's not always a bad thing. It can represent a belief that is holding you back from personal growth."

"Oh, sweetie, please! It's a fucking devil on a fucking card and he has hairy legs and big round titties like a queen! There is no bright side to that ugly bitch!"

Raye couldn't help laughing; she had brought the tarot deck and Ouiji board out just for cheap fun, and pretty much all of her readings were ending this way. Darien had pulled the Ace of Wands, and when told that it was the trump card that foretold success and luck, he had tucked it in his pocket and refused to give it back. She made a mental note to steal it back before he left.

Serena had tied every card to some aspect of her life, no matter how mundane. Her reading took twice as long as everyone else, in which time she drank a lot more vodka than usual. Now there was a very tipsy slutty angel lurching around the apartment.

Noah, whose lazy LeBron James costume consisted of a basketball jersey and headband, kept arguing with her about the validity of the meanings, trying to get a more positive outcome. "Noah, it's not a freaking _game_. There's no way to win!"

He sat back, abashed. "I know."

The slutty gypsy pounded back the rest of her Long Island. "I don't think you do. There's no right answer and no correct card. You just have to apply the interpretations to aspects of your life."

"Well how come I got the Death Card then? That sucks. Let me pick another one."

"Oh God," she sighed, getting up to have Jason fix her another drink.

* * *

The more drinks she consumed, the more consistent her readings became.

"Page of Wands," she announced to the non-slutty butterfly. "You're going to get laid."

Amy choked on a forced chuckle. "Excuse me?"

_Starry Night_ went next. "Queen of Cups," Mina announced as she flipped over the card. "Pretty. What does it mean?"

Raye's eyes were sliding in and out of focus. "It means your costume sucks. And you're going to get laid."

Zach whammed the card down, seeming a bit angry, for some reason. Earlier, Raye had cheerfully informed him that his alien costume, which was nothing but a "Hello My Name Is" sticker, sucked. "Three of Cups."

Raye hiccupped. "You're gonna get laid."

"I know that. With who?"

"Not me, homeboy."

A few more drinks. "OK, Bateman, flip it over."

Kevin obeyed. "What's that?"

She was weaving in her seat. "Knight of Coins. I'm pretty sure you're gonna get laid. Your girlfriend got a 'laid card' too."

He was frowning at her, concerned. "Are you all right?"

She waved him off. "YES. God, lay off. Don't split my head open with an axe."

Shaun of the Dead slid into the seat that the American Psycho had vacated, dropping his cricket bat on the ground. "Ready to do me?"

Raye didn't even glance at the card he pulled. The room was starting to feel too small, and too hot, the music too loud, and too many people were crammed in. Her bedroom would probably be cool, and quiet, and she could pull of her shoes and lay down and maybe the spinning in her head would stop.

"Raye? What does this mean?" He was grinning like an eighteen-year-old lottery winner as he held up the card.

The Lovers. Raye coughed and barely suppressed the rise of bile that nearly escaped. Her face beaded with sweat that started to run into her makeup. Jason stopped smiling.

"It means I put you to bed, now, doesn't it?"

Her head dropped heavily into a semblance of a nod.

"OK. Come on." He reached under her arms and pulled her up as if she weighed as much as a paper moth, and carried her down the hall. "Pink or blue Gatorade?"

She yawned. "Yellow. And get my Ace of Wands from Darien."

"Is that the card that means you get laid? Maybe I should trade with him."


	8. Day Late, Dollar Short

Written for sm_monthly May 2009 Challenge: prompt: "Kaidou"

* * *

He paused in front of her door for mere seconds before knocking, knowing in his heart that if he didn't jump in and force himself to do it immediately, he would remain standing in the dim hallway indefinitely debating if this was the right thing to do.

Of course it was.

What did he have to lose? He had carried her picture in his wallet—buried deep behind photos of his wife and children, of course—for what? At least a decade. Now that the other photos were…no longer necessary, he was free to put her face forward, where he could stare at it at length whenever he felt like it.

He had rescued the small photograph from the rubbish can after the Senator had cleaned out his desk and tossed it without a second glance. At the time, he couldn't imagine being so crass as to casually throw away a photo of one's own daughter along with the scratch paper and old receipts and golf cards; but then again, he had done the same things a few weeks ago, with a picture of his own child in a fit of hopeless rage.

He had much in common with the old Senator now.

The Internet made it ridiculously easy to track someone down, and he had stared at the monitor for long minutes before making his decision. The online white pages had given him ten numerals that he had dialed once before hanging up and deciding that whatever he had to say, was better said in person. Except he didn't know what he wanted to say.

He could barely hear music playing from inside the apartment, so he knocked again, louder.

A male voice rang out and hit the other side of the door. "Raye? That you?"

So he had the right address, but that particular detail was unexpected. A "Mina Aino" was listed along with Raye, and he had wrongly presumed the roommate was female. A choking spasm suddenly radiated from his midsection, and he swallowed to keep from screaming.

"Shit." He heard the man inside mutter. Kaidou was seconds away from fleeing when the door opened.

A young man stood in the doorway, blonde like a Viking with one of those irritating lacrosse-player haircuts that Kaidou had noticed on new Senate interns, and clear blue eyes to complete the perfect Nordic picture. He was taller than Kaidou, much younger, slim and muscled and wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer shorts with a logo pattern that spelled out "SOX". He spoke before Kaidou could get a word in. "Oh hey, I still have that last _Watchtower_ you guys gave me, and I swear, I'll read it and get back to you, but just to warn you, I'm a hard sell. I _really _like sex and alcohol and you know, music and Halloween and blood transfusions and shit. Five bucks if you guys leave me alone for another month?"

Kaidou cleared his throat. "I—you're…is Rachel Hino here?" She had legally taken her mother's maiden name as soon as she had turned eighteen, and this was the first time he had said it out loud.

The blonde guy blinked. "Oh, uh, you know Raye?"

Once, he did. "I'm an…_associate_ of her father's."

"Oh." The young man cheeks flushed; the mention of Raye's father seemed to put him off-balance. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry, I thought you were a---I get a lot of—uh, here, come in." He moved aside and ushered Kaidou in.

He waited in the quaint kitchen with an offered beer as the man stepped out and reappeared wearing a t-shirt and jeans. "Sorry about that, I, uh, work from home and I kinda…don't like to, uh, wear. Clothes. Most of the time." He couldn't meet Kaidou's eyes. "Her dad doesn't have to know that."

Kaidou wanted to laugh, but settled for smirking. He remembered being awestruck by Senator Stovall to the point where casual conversation was a tortuous exercise in second-guessing, and he never thought he would rise to the point where he could get that same reaction out of a stranger. If this man only knew that Old Stovall wouldn't care either way, in fact, he wouldn't even bother to ask. He had heard a rumor a few years back that she had become some sort of burlesque dancer, had blocked streaming video from his office, and stuck to a fabricated story that his daughter had taken a job in "entertainment" in L.A.

"So, uh." The guy was probably trying to make a good impression. All for naught. "You work with her father? The Senator?"

"Yes," Kaidou said, rubbing the sweating beer bottle. He didn't know why he took it; he didn't drink. "I'm his Chief of Staff. I've known Rachel since she was young."

The young man shifted his gaze to something across the room. "That's cool. Um, she should be home from work soon."

"Are you her roommate?" Kaidou straightened, making the kid squirm a bit. It felt good, to have this kind of control back.

"No. Well—yes. I'm her boyfriend."

"So you're 'Mina'?"

"What?" His eyebrows knitted together. "Uh—no, Mina's my sister. She doesn't live her anymore; she moved in with her boyfriend uptown. I'm Jason."

"Kaidou." He didn't feel like he needed to give more than that.

"Uh," Jason stuttered, obviously confused. "Is that your first name or last name?"

Before he could answer, the sound of sharp heels on tile echoed in the hallway, growing louder until the owner stopped in front of the apartment and opened the door.

She was still a force of nature, even while juggling with a huge handbag and a cardboard box full of takeout containers. She didn't notice the two men sitting at the kitchen table as she stepped delicately out of her black stiletto pumps. She was wearing a white dress, with a small black cardigan covering her shoulders.

"Jason? I picked up Chinese. I think we should have sex _before_ we eat so that we're not all bloated and lazy from the starch."

She turned her head and nearly dropped the box when she saw them. "You."

Kaidou stood instinctively, drinking in the sight of her. She was so beautiful, just like he knew she would be. He was amused to see that out of her heels, she hadn't grown much taller than when she was thirteen. Her face was different: more mature, with graceful, high cheekbones dusted with shimmering powder. Her eyes were the same color, that deep crystal violet that people had a hard time believing was real. Her smooth pink lips were parted lightly in shock as she tried to process the presence of the man in front of her. "Rachel."

The sound of her name caused her to close her mouth and narrow her eyes. "Raye," she corrected haughtily, moving to the boyfriend's side of the table. She turned away from Kaidou and leaned over the blonde man. "Hey. Those light beers are mine." Her head dropped and she planted a short, deep kiss on him, obscuring their faces with her curtain of shifting black hair. "I remembered your egg rolls."

"Rach—Raye," Kaidou said, his stomach lurching as he noticed another part of her anatomy that had beautifully matured.

She turned to him, and he felt like a fool. He had come to see Rachel Stovall, the breathtakingly beautiful young wom—_girl_—that he had remembered, the one that shared his secrets and spilled her heart out to him in the lonely hours away from her absent father. He had almost expected her to still be that girl, honest and innocent and impressionable, as haunting and lovely like she was in the picture in his wallet.

Instead, Raye Hino, a grown woman, who once had vowed never to marry, clasped the hand of her live-in lover and stared him down with blistering indifference in her eyes.

He could have taken her rage easier than her apathy.

"What are you doing here?"

They were both looking at him now; his brief moment of power was gone. He had so much to tell her that it seemed too large to be condensed into sentences and paragraphs.

_That he had followed her father to success and ruin. That he was going through a lengthy, bitter divorce that left him with nothing to fill the void but an aging Senator and a stressful job. That he had imagined what became of her over the years, finally gathering the nerve to search on the Internet, and had hopped on a train and came to her doorstep before he could change his mind. That he missed the child that she had been, and that memory of that girl had kept him going through the stretch of days until just moments before, when she had stepped through the door and shattered his fragile illusion. _

That lovely girl was gone. A beautiful woman had taken her place, and it wasn't the same. It would never be.

He kept this inside. "I was in town and came to see how you were doing. And to wish you a happy birthday."

She still looked suspicious. "Did my father send you?"

_Once a lapdog…_ "No," he said. "He didn't."

She dropped her lover's hand and started opening boxes of takeout. "OK, then. I'm doing fine, and thanks for the birthday wishes. Anything else?"

The boyfriend kept looking at each of them in turn; Kaidou wished he could vanish the guy with his mind.

"Do you want to go for a drink, or dinner? To catch up? It's been a while." It sounded stupid and desperate, even to him.

Raye unsheathed a pair of disposable chopsticks and broke them apart with a dry snap. "I'm busy tonight."

"I'm in town all week. I'm staying at the Radisson."

She barely glanced at him. "Good to know. Thanks for stopping by."

A dismissal if he ever heard one. "Thanks for the beer," he said to the boyfriend, who gave him a short nod in return.

The door shut behind him with a soft click; it wasn't like Raye to slam doors anymore, he guessed. He took the stairs at a jog, desperate to get out of this building, this city, this planet.

Thirteen-year-old Rachel Stovall died in his mind's eye: now he had nothing left but a discarded school picture that he threw in the street for the wind to catch. He watched it flutter down the block until it was out of his sight.


	9. The Least I Could Do

Written for sm_monthly May 2009 Challenge: "Friendship"

Pre-_Economics_

* * *

Raye gritted her teeth and wished there was something she could do.

She couldn't reverse time and put Mina's pain back in, as much as she wished to.

She couldn't change a person back into the version that they had been, years ago.

All she could do was sit there and listen to Mina sob out her story, her face swollen from hours of misery, the usual layers of clothing sloppy and haphazard, and not in her usual charming, slightly bohemian way. Her appearance was as shattered as her emotions.

Raye thought about what she usually would do: scream, of course; rage, most definitely. She would curse a blue streak until the four-letter words lost their impact, shout the sadness out of the weeping blonde girl, and best of all, offer constructive, practical solutions that would make everything all better. Raye was full of those, usually. There was no problem that she couldn't pull apart, examine, and turn the other person around, sending them in the direction that would see them better in the end.

This problem had no such solution.

Mina had cried through all the tissues, and was working her way through a spare roll of toilet paper.

"How could he do this?" she whispered, gasping between sobs.

"I don't know."

"I feel so stupid."

"Don't."

It was astonishing that Mina could keep producing tears. "I almost married him."

Raye said nothing as she straightened her spine and hoped that the simmering rage wasn't showing on her face, yet.

"Raye," Mina said, her voice plaintive and heart wrenching. "What am I supposed to do?"

She crawled across her bed and wrapped her arms around her suffering friend's shoulders, pulling the blonde head down to her shoulder. "You don't have to do anything. Don't worry." She fiercely pressed a hard kiss to the sobbing girl's temple. "Someone better is waiting for you, I promise."

Mina let out a long, shivering breath. "Will I be OK?"

Raye's certainty was coming back to her, like warm water thawing and dissolving a chunk of ice. "Yes."

"How do you know?"

"Because," Raye said. "If you're not OK, I'm not OK." She slammed down the pricking tears that hadn't yet reached her eyes; she could shut them off like a pro. "And I'm always OK."

Mina still wept herself into exhaustion, finally falling into a fitful sleep on the part of the bed where Jason usually slept. Raye picked up the used tissues scattered about when the idea came to her.

There was something she could do.

Quietly, she gathered her handbag and a giant suitcase out of her closet, and crept out to the living room. Jason was stretched out on the couch, seemingly asleep, but opened his eyes when he heard her movements. She was grateful for him for leaving them alone, and didn't plan on telling him the whole story until later. No sense in having him fly off the handle, too, even though Raye knew that it killed him to see his sister like this, and with him unable to help.

"I need your car. Please."

He didn't ask any questions, but reached into his pocket and held out the keys.

She loved him for that.

"Do you need help?"

She stopped at the door and turned to meet his eyes. "No. This is something I have to do."

He nodded once, and reached for his phone and placed it within arm's reach of the couch.

She loved him for that, too.

* * *

The drive was short, and she had no idea where to even park, so she landed the Chevelle in front of a driveway and prayed that no one was going out at that hour. The suitcase wheels made an echoing bump as she dragged them up the stairs.

She knocked gently, rightly assuming that he wouldn't answer if she hammered on his door like a lunatic. He was still dressed and the lights were on, and he stared at her like she was a bill collector. "Oh, hey."

No time for this. She shoved him aside and wheeled her suitcase in his apartment. "I'm taking everything."

"Raye, you—"

"Shut up." The first word was enunciated. "I don't want to fucking talk to you, at all, understood? I'm getting her things and leaving." Already her eyes were darting around the room in a hasty inventory. That black and white sketch looked familiar, as did that ceramic bowl. She picked both up and placed them in the suitcase.

He seemed to admit defeat and took a long drag on his cigarette. "Aren't you even going to—"

"No." She pulled more objects down: a picture frame, a scarf, a jacket. She wasn't sure whose brushes those were, but she grabbed them anyway. "You will not speak."

She ran through the bedroom, swiping clothing that she didn't bother to fold. She pulled another painting off the wall, and realizing that she was running out of room, looked for another source.

She found a cardboard box full of vinyl records, and upended it without ceremony. She felt him start to protest. "Shut it!"

Finally, her sweep was over. She precariously balanced the box on the suitcase and prepared to roll the whole thing out.

"Do you—" he started.

Raye turned and stared him down, a practice she had started in junior high, and was very, very good at it by this point. She had him pinned. "Do not contact her. Do not call her; do not come around, do not email or pass messages through friends. If I missed something, or you need something, you call _me_, and we'll work it out between us. Not her. _Me._ Get it?"

He brought his cigarette to his lips again and turned his head sideways, away from her. She resisted the urge to punch his lights out. "Fine."

"Good." She pulled open the door.

"Raye."

Furious, she spun around. "What?"

He gestured with the Parliament. "You're not wearing a coat."

She hadn't noticed until now. "Why the fuck do you care?" The door slammed behind her.

* * *

On the way back, she took a wrong turn, cursed, and tried to pull an illegal U before getting boxed in by an oncoming car that blared its horn.

Back home, she parked and juggled the suitcase and flimsy box down the dark sidewalk, the frigid wind slashing through the fibers of her clothing. She was almost at the corner when she felt the side of the box give, and a few random objects feel to the sidewalk in muffled cracks that echoed down the dark, silent street.

The clattering did her in, and her back hit the stone as she slid down to the sidewalk, her shoulders heaving as she pulled her knees to her chest.

Her friend was hurting. Her _best_ friend was hurting. Raye had held her, stroked her hair, felt the tremors of grief wrack her body, set out on a difficult retrieval mission, and all the while, the same selfish thought swirled in her mind like a poisonous black cloud.

_Thank God it's not me._

What kind of friend wipes away tears and then thinks that? What kind of _person_ thinks that? What kind of fucking _human being_ feels relief that the bullet misses her and hits someone else, someone she loves?

She let her head sink down into her arms and shivered, almost physically sick from shame.

It made her realize that she hadn't stopped hating herself yet.

When she could no longer ignore the cold chilling her to the bone, she picked herself up, gathered the fallen objects, and trudged heavily up the stairs to her apartment, her face sliding back into an indifferent mask.

Jason was really asleep when she returned. Silently, she left the stuffed suitcase and box on the floor and continued to her bedroom. Mina was curled up on her bed, the grief still clinging to her, even while asleep.

Raye slid in next to her, leaned her head into the pillow and stared into her friend's slumbering face.

When Mina woke up, she wouldn't know what to do next.

She had created a small problem and had come through with a small solution.

She touched her friend's hair gently and hoped that she had helped.


	10. Flame Sniper

Title: Flame Sniper, written for sm_monthly, theme "Attack Name"

Rated M

* * *

Barnes & Noble had some very smart marketing decisions: they sold things other than books, they let people without any intention of purchasing sit and read for hours, they were always stocked with a Starbucks or some other coffee bar, and their bathrooms were usually the most accessible and cleanest in the area. Raye juggled an armful of items as she found Jason paging through a picture book of guitars. "I'm going to buy this stuff."

Without taking his eyes off the page, he dug his wallet out of his back pocket and handed it to her wordlessly.

Raye's eyebrows rose; she had him better trained that she thought.

"Wait." He held out a hardcover that had been tucked under his arm. "Buy this, too."

She looked at the cover, and shook her head slightly, trying to find the logic in purchasing a book entitled "T.O's Finding Fitness", when the purchaser made a regular habit of swearing and spitting varied insults at the author whenever he happened to pop up on television.

It probably had something to do with the "$3.00" sale sticker plastered on the cover, smack dab in the middle of T.O.'s face. She wouldn't put it past him to move it there intentionally.

After checking out, she found him in the same spot that she had left him, and handed back the wallet. "Thanks. I'm going to grab a coffee, want one?"

He automatically pulled the wallet out again and held it out, still nose-deep in the guitar book.

"No, I got it. I used up the rest of your cash."

That got his attention, and his head finally snapped up. "What did you buy?" The last word was laden with question marks.

Raye opened the bag and started pulling objects out. "Want to see? I got a new Moleskine, two books, tissue paper, uh, a yoga strap, a room diffuser refill, which I hope comes with the sticks because I don't know where half of them went to, but I'm down to four…you haven't been touching it, right?"

He wasn't listening, as he had pulled something out of her bag and was staring at it like it was a test tube full of Ebola that he was expected to swallow. "Raye."

"Yeah, hon?" She knew that look he was giving her; it was reserved for when she did something completely justifiable but so far out of his comfort zone that it went beyond his comprehension, like when she told him how much her shoes cost, or what sexual position was his sister's favorite.

He held the object up; it wasn't much bigger than a baseball. "You bought a thirty dollar candle."

Oh, piss. She cocked her head. "No, I didn't. It was on sale. It's a twenty dollar candle."

That didn't help at all. "Raye, you bought a twenty dollar candle." He stared at the box for a few seconds, reading the sides. "You're kidding. It's doesn't even do anything; it's just a freaking candle. You just spent twenty bucks on a freaking candle!"

Quick as a cat, she snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it back into her bag. "It's a nice candle."

"That was two thousand cents!" He stuck the guitar book back on the shelf and started wandering towards the Starbucks counter, his blue eyes distant and dazed like he was shell-shocked.

"Jason," she started, rolling her eyes and following.

"A twenty dollar candle."

"Jason."

"What? Sorry, I can't hear you over the tears of starving children who can't believe that you spent twenty dollars on a hunk of wax with a string in it."

This was getting ridiculous. "It's made from organic soy wax. That's expensive."

They had reached the counter. "For twenty bucks, it should be made from ground up diamonds and the tears of Jesus Christ himself. Tall drip, please."

Raye rummaged through her bag and pulled out his questionable purchase. "Really, you're giving me crap about the candle when you purchased _this_ fine piece of literature?"

"It was three bucks! I could have bought six of Terrell Owens's book for the amount you spent on one candle."

The barista was looking at both of them in turn, seemingly amused. "And for you, ma'am?"

"Oh, grande nonfat hazelnut latte. Thanks."

The barista scribbled markings on the cup and nodded at Jason. "I bought T.O.'s book, too."

"Really?" Jason said. "How was it?"

He shrugged mildly. "Worth three bucks, I guess. Wouldn't pay more than that."

"Smart man," he said, elbowing Raye gently. "I don't suppose you would pay more than, I don't know, five bucks for a candle, would you?"

Raye cut the guy off before he could answer. "I'm buying the coffee, so don't take his side."

The barista nodded, trying to hold his grin down into a polite smile. Raye had a feeling that he was going to share this story with his coworkers after they had left. "Five seventy one, please."

Jason was all over that like white on rice. "Oh, look, that's about one third the price of your candle! Maybe you can scoop out a handful and give him that."

_I love this person,_ Raye thought to herself as she paid for the coffee. _I love him, and that's why I'm not killing him right now. _

He got one more crack in before they left the bookstore. "So can we burn this thing when we get home? I want to see what twenty dollars smells like."

* * *

They sat at the kitchen table as Raye trimmed the wick down, struck a match, and lit the contested candle. Jason had cleared the table before reverently placing it in the center, and made a show of dusting the surface around it before pulling the lid off the jar. Raye had never seen an action performed so sarcastically in her life.

Jason poked at the glass jar, causing the flame to flicker as the melted wax sloshed around the inside. "OK, when's it going to do tricks?"

She pulled an elastic band off of her wrist and swept her hair back into a ponytail. "Take off your shirt."

"What?"

She brushed her bangs sideways and gestured at him. "You heard me. Take off your shirt."

He complied, pulling off his t-shirt by grabbing the back and flipping it over his head, in the way that only guys do. "OK?"

She slid over until she was leaning against him, and reached for the candle. "Do you know why soy wax is special?"

"Because it's twenty dollars?"

She gritted her teeth and ignored that. "Because," she said, holding the jar above his bare chest and tipping it over gently. "Soy wax doesn't burn like regular wax. It melts into oil." A few drips of the hot liquid dropped onto his skin, making him flinch with surprise. "It doesn't burn," she continued, using her fingertips to rub the oil over the tight, hard muscles of his stomach, and smiled as she felt him start to squirm.

Carefully, she lowered to her knees in front of him, still gently massaging the oil onto his body. "It's very good for pouring on someone."

His breath hitched as she popped open the button on his jeans and slowly unzipped. She slid her cheek against the flat plane of his pelvis before pulling the elastic of his boxers down and brushing her lips against his erection. Jason was as reliable as a teenager, sporting wood at the slightest hint of stimulation. "I think it was worth it," she whispered, before taking him completely into her mouth.

He had only lasted a few minutes before losing control and scrambling to the floor, tearing her clothes off in the process.

* * *

Later, Raye leaned her head against his shoulder and tried to catch her breath as they lay tangled on the kitchen floor. "So, now do you think it's worth it?"

He laid a kiss on the side of her head, right above her ear, making her shiver. "No."

She sat up until she was straddling him, her black hair falling in fans down her bare body. "You're kidding."

"Nope." He yawned, fighting off post-coital fatigue. "You can get me naked for free."


	11. Little Things

Title: Little Things, written for sm_monthly theme "Spider"

* * *

Raye was just about to slip on her shoe when she noticed it, and thank God that she did; otherwise, her reaction would have been far more devastating and much more likely to end in total mental breakdown and property damage. The rush of panic was so sudden and overwhelming that she felt her throat release a scream before she could realize and stifle it.

"AAH! Ew! Ew! Ew! MINA! Help, Mina help help!" She backed away, bleating helplessly. "Ew, Oh GOD, gross, ew!"

Mina had just finished pulling her hair back into a ponytail, and was frozen with both arms above her head like a stickup, a hank of blonde in each hand. "Rei, what is it?"

They had finished the show an hour earlier. All the other Sugars had already left, with their friends, partners, hanger-ons, and a professional athlete or two, leaving Raye and Mina to finish getting dressed before packing it in. Raye danced around the dressing room, scratching at her bare arms. "There's a dead spider in my shoe."

Mina's mouth dropped as she clapped her hands to her face. "Oh, _yuck_! Yuck!"

"Get rid of it!"

"No way!" Mina backed away from the innocent-looking black pumps like they hid a pound of C-4.

"I'm not touching it! I hate their legs!" It must have been the complimentary Hangar One she had been sipping all night, because the squealing level was rising to a new high watermark as she fell over Mina in the rush to the doorway. Raye practically yanked it off its hinges. "Darien!"

The figure at the end of the hallway, dressed impeccably in a dark suit with no tie, his matte silver shirt unbuttoned at the top, gestured impatiently at the phone stuck to his ear.

Raye kept on him. "Please, please Darien! Darien, come here! We need you!"

He let them jump around for a few more hysterical minutes before finishing his call and hanging up. "OK, I expect this out of Mina, so what is your excuse for acting like a freaking lunatic?"

"Spider!" she spat. In her haste, she forgot to berate him for his assholey choice of words. "In my shoe! Please, please go and get it out!"

Darien scoffed. "Heeeell no! I fucking hate spiders! What, you think that because I'm the guy that it's my job or something to dispose of disgusting-assed crawlies?"

"Yes!" Raye barked, disregarding everything she had said previously about gender roles

"Fuck that! I hate their goddamn little crawlie legs!"

Mina hopped from foot to foot like a child that had to use the restroom. "Oh my GOD, you're kidding me. You SUCK."

Darien's face darkened. "Well, screw you! I'm not going to kill it!"

"I'm not either," Mina whined from the doorway. They were silent for a moment, as Raye fidgeted nervously in place, before Darien came to an executive decision.

"Get Mako. We'll have her flush it."

Mina jogged off, ponytail swinging. "I'll try and get her before she leaves! She was going to go out with Jason's friend but I think they're still in the back!" She rounded the corner and burst through the double doors, leaving Darien and Raye alone in the hallway.

She purposely avoided Darien's eyes.

Naturally, he picked up on it like a shark scenting blood in the water. "Raye, what's the matter?" he asked brusquely.

She made a dramatic display of nonchalance. "Nothing," she said, leaning against the wall, her arms crossed tightly across her body like a pretzel. Internally, she knew what was coming; it was pretty much unavoidable, and ignoring the elephant in the room was turning it into a dinosaur. A ten thousand pound winged dinosaur with lasers shooting out of its eyes.

"Are you acting weird towards me because we had sex?"

* * *

Raye hoped that he didn't notice her cringing, but she didn't hide it very well. "Yes."

He fiddled with the case on his phone. "You told me it wouldn't be an issue."

"I know," she muttered, her face growing hot. It hadn't been—at the time. He had caught her doing—_that—_after a show last week, alone in the dressing room, still wearing her stage getup of white lingerie and garters, with a plastic rosary around her neck. She had been lost in the moment, sweating slightly and inching towards release, when he had barged in unexpectedly. She knew her eyes had widened as much as his at that moment, both of them lost to shock, before he rushed to her and pinned her up against the wall, attacking with his mouth. She had kissed him back, wet and frantic, like she was drowning. It wasn't a far step for them: he was her friend, and her agent; they had known each other for years. He saw her practically naked on a weekly basis.

She had forgotten herself as he threw himself into her without a moment's hesitation and fucked her completely senseless.

Back in this hallway, in this time, she sighed. "It just can't happen again."

"Was I that bad?" he laughed, trying for a joke to break the tension, and let it slide away as it died. He straightened unnecessarily, his eyes dark. "Why? Because of Trista?"

"No, not because of her." Although the fact that he had a girlfriend was a pretty clear motivator, Raye thought, before deciding to just come out with it. After all, if she couldn't be honest with someone who had been inside of her, who could she be honest with? "It's—you really want to hear this?"

He moved close enough to face her; before last week, she would have no problem with the proximity. "Yes, I do."

His voice was gentle at that moment, just like his face. If he had been someone other than Darien, and she had been someone other than Raye, perhaps he would have touched her face, or drawn her closer to comfort her with an embrace. But he was Darien, and she was Raye, so they stood on opposite ways of the hallway and stared at each other until she continued.

"Because I want someone, too, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, OK?"

He looked slightly startled at that admission. A smile crossed his face, and it was probably the first time that Raye saw him without his guard up. "What's wrong with me?"

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and back up to his eyes before answering. "Well, besides the fact that you've been cheating on your girlfriend for years?"

"Don't throw that at me. Trista and I are mutually dysfunctional."

"Even so," she said. "There's a woman out there somewhere, and she's going to be the one you settle down for. And I know I'm not her."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do. Darien," she moved forward boldly, closing the space between their bodies to mere inches. He hitched in his breath. "I know I'm not her. And I don't want to trick myself into thinking I could be her, because then I'd be pretending and lying to myself, and I'd be so hung up on thinking that I might be her, that…that I'd miss him, when he does come along." She let out her breath and stared at the ceiling. "Whoever he is. I'd wish he'd hurry up and find me, already."

Somewhere in another room, people were shouting and slamming cases shut, the clamor muffled slightly through the walls.

Darien cleared his throat. "Raye?"

She looked at him. "Hm?"

He touched her on the arm and squeezed it before speaking. "You're going to make some guy fall absolutely fucking ass-backwards in love with you." He held her gaze, as if daring her to disagree with him.

Something passed between them. "You really think I'll find a guy to put up with my temper?" she smirked, feeling some of the tension that had been pressing down on her evaporate like dead mist.

Darien smiled back, wide and genuine. "You really think I'll find a girl that will make me settle down?"

She thought briefly of letting a burn fly out, but what came out of her mouth was: "I do."

He dropped her arm and backed up against the wall, running a hand through his usually perfect hair. "I sure hope so." He shrugged. "But you know, if I don't?" he said, raising his eyebrows at her suggestively.

Raye knew what to do. "Mmm, it wasn't the best I've had."

He scoffed. "Oh bullshit, I had you moaning. Never would have pegged you as a moaner, Raye. I think they heard you in Moscow."

"And you," she said, leaning back and smiling, relieved that the sentimentality was over. "What a dirty mouth."

"It gets the job done," he smirked.

She was about to say something artfully scathing when Mina pounded through the double doors, Makoto following closely on her heels. "I got her!"

Raye gave him one last look before pulling Makoto to the dressing room door. "It's in the left one. Please, _please_ get it out intact; I don't want spider guts smeared all over my insole."

Makoto rolled her eyes as she opened the door, armed with only a single tissue. "You should be the one doing this, Darien. You big pussy."

"I'll get you a raise, baby. Now go kill."

"Brave girl," Mina muttered, twisting the end of her ponytail. "But I guess she's used to it; Noah's a freaking slob. My brother found a half-eaten Pop-tart under the couch with a dead mouse stuck to it."

Raye blinked at the mention of Mina's brother, but shook it off as Makoto returned, holding a crumpled tissue aloft. The three of them visibly recoiled away from her. "Good news! It wasn't a spider!"

"Really?" Raye frowned. Maybe she had overreacted.

Makoto grinned and held out the tissue. "No, it's a cockroach. Oh, and it's still alive."

Mina screamed and shot down the hallway like a cannonball, with Raye and Darien bringing up the rear. Makoto's laugh followed the retreat. "You guys! How can you be scared of something so little?"

Raye allowed herself one glance at the dark-haired man running alongside of her before turning away and calling back down the hall to her laughing friend. "Little things can hurt, too."


	12. Hanukkah One

For sugarcross who can't read this at work!

* * *

Socks. A tie. A belt. Some money--that was the bright spot--and a new wallet. A used copy of the _Communist Manifesto_ from his hippie uncle.

Those were the kinds of gifts he got for Hanukkah.

He had whined about it once, and his mother nearly had a heart attack, and asked why he would do such a thing to her, to even suggest that when she knew how she felt about gentile holidays, especially _that one_. Zach dropped the subject and sulked underfoot like a pussy bitch for the next seven days.

The twenty-fifth of December held no real significance other than Chinese takeout and rented movies, so he mounted an escape to a place guaranteed to pull out all the stops on the most commercial of holidays: a family gathering of upper class WASPs.

Kevin, that lucky bastard, had fallen out of the right crotch and was infinitely wealthier than anyone Zach knew, including all of the damn lawyers and bankers in his extended family. He had grown accustomed to his friend's lifestyle by deploying a complicated mental defense mechanism against the sometimes-painful longing and desire, and staying at the mansion eventually became like a highly anticipated but familiar vacation. He didn't even flinch when his friend revealed the new ATV he had gotten that morning--he knew that eventually Kevin would gift it to him. Expensive presents were so commonplace to Kevin that he didn't hold much in high regard, but the things that he did cherish were unusual, and he clung to them with a ferocity that rivaled Zach's attachment to his Froggie.

He had stuffed Froggie in the bottom of his sleeping bag that he had brought with him. Kevin probably knew about that, but didn't say anything.

They ducked around the numerous, increasingly drunk relatives and snuck outside to take the ATV on a test drive. Zach took a spin through the frozen grounds of the estate until his face was chafed from the cold, and quit when he was chucked off after taking a turn too hard. His mother would murder him if he were killed. They grabbed plates of food, evaded more relatives, and escaped to Kevin's room with a pilfered bottle of wine. Unfortunately, they had a tail.

"Kevin, I want to play with you guys. Please." His little sister whined and tugged at his shirt, but he shrugged her off and shut the door in her face. They could hear her starting to cry and stamp her sparkly silver dress shoes. "I'm telling Mommy!" she yelled through the door, and ran away wailing.

Zach smirked; Chrissy would have leveled him if he had tried that with her. "We coulda let her stay."

Kevin took a seat at his desk and fired up his brand new computer. "No, we couldn't."

Ten minutes later they were stuffing their faces and filling up the hard drive with porn.

"Shit," Zach muttered around a mouthful of sugar cookie. It was nice to eat a holiday food that wasn't dripping with oil for a change. "I didn't know they could stretch that much." At fourteen, both boys were virgins, although Kevin had gotten to third base with a girl from their sister school after a junior varsity football game that fall. Zach had made an attempt to touch a boobie once and the girl had started crying; they counted that one as a sacrifice fly.

His friend slanted his head sideways. "I guess it's possible. Although I don't know any circumstances where you would get two of them in there outside of porn."

"We're still young. We have time."

Kevin gave him a long, disgusted look. "Why would you want to? There's another guy involved."

"A girl with an ass like that one could get me to do a lot of things, Kev. Plus, what if I end up being a porn star? I'd have to do double penetration at least once to earn some cred."

"You're sick, Zach."

"Ah, fuck ya. You know what is sick? This stuffing." He shoveled another mouthful in, savoring the forbidden bacon bits mixed in. "Christmas blows Hanukkah away hands down. Less praying, better food, better gifts. Don't get me wrong; I got nothing but mad Jew pride for my chosen people, but I think I'd stab Moses himself in the heart for more of this bacon."

Kevin turned back to his computer, his eyes distant. "It's not better, believe me."

"Bullshit, how can you say that? You got a fucking computer _and_ an ATV. I got to listen to my Nana criticize my sisters for three solid hours."

His friend seemed unsure of how to phrase his next sentence; he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and then tried again. "Because--"

He was cut off by a knock at the door. Kevin used a shortcut to minimize all windows and turned his chair around, sighing. "Come in."

They were expecting his mother to open the door, undoubtedly furious at them for kicking Serena out, but instead it was Kevin's cousin Trevor who entered the room. He was in his mid-twenties, still attending some private liberal arts college in Vermont, and had one of the sickest cars that Zach had ever seen. Kevin's face darkened; he didn't care much for Trevor, and especially not when he was loaded to the gills and stumbling over himself as he crossed the room.

"Kevin!" Trevor slurred, kicking Zach's sleeping bag out of the way. He noogied his head as he passed. "What's up, Jewboy?"

"Fuck you," Zach said, swiping at his hand, but Trevor had already weaved over to Kevin's chair and draped an arm around the boy.

"What's up, Kev!" He paused and burped, leaning heavily and nearly falling over. "What are you guys looking at, porn?"

"No," Kevin scowled, his face rapidly reddening.

Trevor pinched his cheek. "OH yes you were! You're looking at porno, aren't you, you little bastard?" He stopped, and then slowly grinned. "You little _bastard_," he repeated, emphasizing the last word.

Zach didn't think it was possible for Kevin's face to get any darker, but it did, until he looked positively ill. Trevor leaned in again, and Zach held his breath.

"Heh. Little bastard. Fits, doesn't it?" He cackled and slapped Kevin on the shoulder. "Come on, man, don't get embarrassed. You know it, I know it, we all fucking know it, man. Your parents, my parents, hell--everyone knows about you, you _little bastard._" He straightened up and nearly fell. "Does your buddy here know? He probably does, right? Everyone fucking knows, but no one talks about it: it's the _Chaston_ way!"

"Get the fuck out of my room." Despite being more than a decade younger, Kevin easily manhandled his drunken cousin out of the room and slammed the door. He leaned against the frame, and Zach realized with a strange kind of horror that his friend was close to tears.

Kevin sucked in a breath and pulled his composure back in. "That's why I hate fucking Christmas."

Zach wanted to tell him that it was all right, and he had nothing to worry about, but when his mouth popped open, different words came tumbling out. "I think I'm over double penetration. Let's find some tittyfucking on Brazilian girls."

It took Kevin a long time to smile, but when he did, it erased all hints of doubt from his face. "I can get behind that. Can they be blonde?"

"They can be anything you want, man." He picked a piece of bacon out of the stuffing and shoved it in his mouth. "Next year let's skip this bullshit and go to my house. Hope you like potatoes and guilt."


	13. Hanukkah Two

Hanukah 2

It was only the second week, and month of December was shaping up to be the best of his short life.

Three things had happened already that school year.

One, Zach found out that he really, really liked drugs. Hallucinogenics provided the most amusement, weed kept his mind happy while still being able to function in a family setting, pills were cheap and plentiful in his overmedicated prep school. Finding the right combination was a delightful science experiment: toking up and then popping an Adderall let to skull-rattling masturbation. The next project was procuring a Viagra tablet to take with E.

Two, he had finally gotten laid, and only five weeks after Kevin did. The girl was a solid seven and a half, would have been nicer if she didn't use so much hairspray, and had gasped out when he stuck it in: "Ow, you're big!" The smug expression still hadn't left his face.

Three, he had made some serious money peddling the illegal pharmaceuticals using the time-tested trick of buying low and selling high. Rich kids would pay ridiculous amounts to get fucked up, Zach found, simply because they were sheltered and lazy. It was much tidier to buy off of a classmate, and they were all too chickenshit to wander down to the docks on their own. He had bought his father a new laptop for Hanukkah, and he was going to give it to him tonight.

When he unwrapped it, he looked at his glassy-eyed son with a trace of suspicion, and mustered a thanks.

Later, his father found him outside methodically poking holes in the the frozen layer on top of the snow with a stick. "Zach?"

He dropped the stick and ignored the tiny green worms heads that would poke out from them. He'd get them later. "Yeah?"

His father didn't look very much like him; he was dark-haired and olive-skinned like Tabby, and calm like her too. "Zach, are you doing something that you shouldn't?"

With his new hobbies, he had gotten very good at lying. "No. What are you talking about?"

They heard shouting coming from inside the house: Chrissy and their mother going at it, screaming at the top of their lungs. His father sighed and turned back go inside. "We'll talk about this later." He paused with his hand on the doorknob and turned to his son, who was staring at the snow with his face wiped of expression. "I trust you, you know."

"Thanks Dad," Zach muttered. He fingered a tab of acid inside of his pocket and stuck it on his tongue the moment the door closed.


	14. Hanukkah Three

Hanukkah 3

Upon hearing the request, Zach went to his first, standby response. "Hell no."

He could practically hear his mother's glare through the phone; amazing technology they had these days. He wondered if there was a "Jewish Mother" iPhone app out yet: iGuilt. "Watch your language, and I'm picking you up at the airport on the tenth. You're not getting out of this. Tabby is bringing her boyfriend over."

_Oh yeah? Watch me._ "Mom, look outside."

"No."

"Just do it!"

She rolled a sigh like a tidal wave. He heard her shuffle around. "OK, I'm looking out the front window, what do you mean?"

"What's it like outside?"

"What do you mean, what's it like? It's like how it is this time of year!"

He rubbed a hand down his face and cut a perfect line on the glass tabletop with the edge of a razor blade. "That means it's freezing cold."

"Well, yeah. We got some snow last week. That new family across the street still didn't shovel the front sidewalk, I don't know what they're waiting for. Someone to slip and fall and break their neck, I guess."

That statement earned another line. He had bought his parents a house—two actually, one being a summer home in the Hamptons—and a condo in Florida, and his mother insisted on settling them in a house within four blocks of his sisters. "Sorry Mom, nothing short of a subpoena is going to drag me out of St. Barth's right now. It's 80 degrees, sunny, beautiful, and I'm drinking rum made from some sort of endangered fruit hybrid—something." He let the humor slip out of his voice for a moment. "I have to work, anyway. They don't recognize Jewish holidays."

"But don't you have vacation saved up?"

He had to take a hard line, or else she was going to win this round, and the score had been tipped in her favor for too long. "I'll come after New Year's, I promise."

She was silent for a long moment. "Your father would really like to see you."

"I know, I'll see him after New Year's." His phone beeped; the crew was here, and there was a Portuguese supermodel in the mix. He couldn't miss out. "I gotta go, Mom. Love to Dad."

Zach ended the call before she could respond, and dropped his head to the table to snort up the white powder that would keep him going for another twenty-four hours. There was a party on the yacht, undoubtedly with the very best Columbian export, and if he didn't fuck that model before Kevin did, he'd never live it down.

_Live high, live mighty, because life is but a dream. _


	15. Hanukkah Four

Hanukkah 4

Zach wasn't going to move.

He wasn't going to do anything, besides sit on his parents—_mother's_—mother's couch and get shitwrecked until he passed out, or better yet, died and erased his pathetic existence from the entire world. Fortunately, his mother was trying to prevent that from happening, although she couldn't do anything about…anything else.

She touched his shoulder gently as she rose from the couch. "Zach, let's light the Menorah. Sun's down and you haven't eaten all day. You're getting too skinny, you'll get sick. Come on, come on."

"I'm not in the mood, Mom," he muttered, keeping his eyes glued to the television. Another swallow of scotch followed. "I want to see how Stabler solves this one."

His mother turned away, shifting around as she tried to get her bearings around the uneasiness that had settled into their dynamic. Before, she would boss him, and guilt him, and either had about a fifty percent chance of working, depending on his sobriety levels, but now she would push gently, unsure of what would set him off. It wasn't like her to tread lightly. It was revolting.

She tried again. "Your father would—"

The first two words drilled into him like a battering ram, and he resisted the urge to punch something just to watch it shatter. "MOM."

His mother jumped back, and he supposed he should feel guilty about that, if he could feel. "Don't fucking tell me what Dad wants because he's not—" The words got stuck in a sudden wave of heat coming from his chest. "Stop tell me what he would and would not fucking do! You always do that like—like he's—" Swallowing around the lump was useless. "You know what? _Fuck_ this."

He kicked over the ottoman as he stormed out of the house, blind to his mother's breakout sobs. The back porch was covered in a layer of freezing white powder--and he was clad only in a tshirt and jeans, no shoes--but he couldn't feel the piercing cold of the winter air as he collapsed in deck chair. The tightness contracting in his throat was so intense that he could barely breathe around it.

He leaned forward on his knees and tried to make his hands stop shaking. They stopped, but the rest of him didn't.


	16. Hanukkah Five

Guilt made him do it. Naturally.

He was two thousand miles and change away from his mother during the holiday. She called to remind him of this at least twice a day starting the day after Thanksgiving.

Naturally, he had told her it was nothing personal, nothing to do with her; he just needed some time away from anyone that would remind him of his father. The last year had been a disaster of substance abuse and self-loathing, and while a whole lot of that remained, it was even worse when he would see his mother absently twist her wedding band, or his sister raise her eyebrows in the same way their father did, or any of the hundreds of millions of symbols and whispers that a person had existed on this Earth and was no longer there.

She had cried. A lot. And then begged him to reconsider, citing her broken heart and her loneliness and her need to see her son over Hanukkah, and how could he do this to her after everything she did for him, all the sacrifices she had made, and he had to go and quit his job—his very _prestigious, rewarding _job-and become nothing more than a surf bum in _California,_ the hotbed of sin. And vegetarians.

He let her carry on for about ten minutes before reminding her that she also had two daughters, both of whom lived within spitting distance, and maybe she should get to know them for a change. She didn't have a chance to respond before he ended the call.

The guilt started to eat at him the moment he hung up, but he tried to push it aside and remember what his therapist said about guilt: that it could be used as a way of control, and the only person allowed to control his emotions was himself. Zach put his bare feet up on the railing of his deck and watched the sun blur into a wash of pink and gold as it touched and then sank over the edge of the ocean.

Now would be the time to light the first candle, but the only thing he had in his house that was made of wax was meant to be rubbed over his surfboard. Not to be discouraged, he busted out a few Zig Zags and rolled a joint the size of his pinky finger, and fired it up to commemorate the occasion.

His phone beeped with a text; he coughed out a cloud and opened the message. It was from Darien. _Happy Jewish holiday. Be in town this wkend c u then._

Zach grinned to himself and took another hit. The lull of the waves breaking against the shore seemed to ease the tension out of his neck; he rubbed the back of it absently as he watched the sky darken to indigo. The stars came out, and a tiny sliver of moon illuminated the water. Inside of his house, his iPod hit "Night Nurse" in its rotation.

It was then that he had his epiphany.

He realized that now, at this moment, everything in the world suddenly made sense. Zach knew that he was meant to be here, on his deck, looking at the ocean and smoking a J, and nothing he had experienced in his short life could add up to this.

He was on his own.

There was no bottom line to watch, no client to make obscenely wealthy, no little people to screw over. His mother was thousands of miles away. He had no girlfriend or wife to answer to, no kids to provide for, no responsibility for anyone's happiness but his own. Hell, he didn't even have to pass his joint over to anyone. He could sit out here all night and watch the stars move across the sky, and get lost in his own dreams, which had been suppressed for so long that he had to train his mind to recognize and grasp onto them.

There was something he wanted to do. He picked up his phone again, searched through the numbers until he found the one he wanted, and connected the call. Thalia had been a great lay: all ferocious hands, wild hair, and no strings attached, but more importantly, she was very good at her job. A design was in his inbox within hours, and his skin was under assault the next day.

Darien was the first one to see it when he came in that weekend.

"Huh," was all he muttered. "Thought you guys weren't supposed to get those."

Zach shrugged and cracked open a homebrew for his friend. The back of his neck, now sporting a blue and black Magen David, itched with a million fiery pinpricks of hell. "Gotta represent. Cheers."

A few months later, the stylized star was just one of many.


	17. Hanukkah Six

"Zach."

He barely paused. "What."

His sister frowned at him from across the table. "Don't hog all the sour cream."

There was a stock response to that, too. "Fuck you, get your own."

"Zach!" His mother admonished. It had taken a few years, but she was back to alternately guilting him about his "lifestyle choices" and suffocating him with maternal love, with the occasional head-slap thrown in. Chrissy's interruption had cut her off in the middle of a monologue about their cousin Adam and his new medical practice, and how it wasn't too late for him to go to medical school, since he was always so good at science, and he'd have plenty of time for it since he _still_ wasn't working. "You will not cuss at my table. Chrissy, there's another container in the fridge, you can get it."

Chrissy's nostrils flared in indignation. Zach's other sister and her fiancée froze like statues, waiting for the reaction. Roger had been around long enough to know what to expect. "This isn't fair! Just share with me, you selfish asshole!" She made a grab for the bowl, but he pulled it out of her reach.

He knew exactly where to strike. "You sure, Chris? Moment on your lips, you know—"

She threw her napkin down and dragged him to the floor, trying to aim the blows at his stomach as he laughed and wrestled her arms down. Their mother jumped up, screaming, as she tried to pull them apart. Tabby pushed Roger's arm, imploring him to do something as Zach cackled like a maniac and wrestled a wedgie on his sister as he dodged her blows.

There hadn't been a Hanukkah fight like this in years. It was long overdue.


	18. Hanukkah Seven

Sorry for the delay! My holiday season kind of tied me up.

That being said, sorry, but Hanukkah the last contains too many spoilers, so if you'd like to read it, message me and I'll direct you to the LJ, or if I get yelled at enough, post it here. But warning, it's FULL of spoilers.

* * *

It was a miracle that all of the pieces fell into place so neatly, but Zach had one more hurdle to jump over before he could rest easy.

He held his breath and dialed the number. "Ma."

"What took you so long to return my call?" She had called that morning; it was now three in the afternoon. "I know it's not because you're _working."_

Zach rubbed one hand over his face and wondered if it was too late to abort the whole stupid idea. "I'm going to propose something and you're not going to go crazy." He might as well have suggested the ocean not be wet, or the Earth to not rotate, or the Detroit Lions not to suck.

"What is it? Did you get your job back?"

Two years, and she still would not let that go. "_No_."

"Oh." Amazing how a single syllable could convey so much disappointment. He chose to ignore it, again.

"I'm bringing someone with me tomorrow."

"Who? The orphan?"

He let out his breath and wondered when his mother was going to stop referring to Darien as "the orphan" and Kevin as "that shagetz". Probably the day after never. "No. It's um, a girl."

Zach could hear his mother's breath hitch a little, and with good reason. He had never done anything remotely like this before, but until very recently he hadn't been in the company of women that were worthy of bringing to his mother's house. "WHAT? Are you serious? Zachary, you'd better not be playing with me—"

"I'm not."

"Who is it? How come I've never heard of her before? ZACH! Why didn't you tell me you were dating a _girl_?"

She was picking up steam; he had to cut her off. "We're not dating, Mom."

"What do you mean you're not dating?" He held the phone away from his ear as her voice picked up in volume. "You're going to bring a girl home to meet me at Hanukkah and you're not dating?"

"Yes. No. It's complicated."

"Zach, what are you going on about? Who is this girl?"

"Her name is Amy."

"Amy what?"

This was going just as expected. "Amy Mizzuno."

"Oh my G-d, she's Italian!"

"OK, before you start going off—"

"You spent all that time in California and you couldn't find a nice Jewish girl? We practically own Hollywood!"

"Mother."

"Did you ever sign up for JDate like I told you to? Tabby and Roger met over JDate, you know."

"You've mentioned that a couple hundred times." Roger was a decent guy, and made Tabby reasonably happy; otherwise, Zach would have cursed the entire concept of JDate straight to hell. "Mom, listen, Amy's kind of shy, and I had to really convince her to come and meet you, so please don't—"

"Why are you bringing her here then if you're not dating?"

That issue was an economy-sized can of rabid, fanged worms that he didn't want to get into, but it was too late to back out now. "We're not…_not _dating."

"What is that, what does that mean."

He swallowed and wondered why he had chosen to do this sober. "Uh."

"You're dating but you're not dating. Are you sleeping with her?"

Zach would never understand his mother's ongoing fascination with his sex life, or what compelled him to actually be truthful with her when she pried. "Yes."

"Did you get her pregnant?"

"No."

"Oy gevalt! Is that why you're bringing her over to meet me?"

"Ma, I said no!"

"So instead of a girlfriend, you're bringing over some random girl that you're sleeping with…why?"

"Forget it! We'll go to Kevin's house instead. We can eat bacon and sing songs about Jesus."

"Wait!" It was too easy to push her buttons. "OK, OK, bubeleh, what's going on? Something's going on. You never bring girls home to meet me."

_With good reason. _He wasted too many seconds trying to think of what to say, and his mother picked up on it like a shark smelling blood in the water. "Zach."

"Yeah," he sighed.

"Are you in love with this girl?" Her voice was gentle.

He didn't respond, and his silence spoke volumes.

His mother heaved a sigh hard enough to rattle the connection. "I guess it's all right. I just want to see you happy, honey, even if it breaks my heart."

Zach couldn't help rolling his eyes so hard that it almost broke his neck.

"I hope she's not lactose intolerant."

He decided to withhold Amy's vegetarianism for the moment. "See you tomorrow, Ma."


	19. The Darkness of December

Title: The Darkness of December

* * *

The birthday card that appeared in Jason's mailbox was encased in a red envelope, and the stamp had a Nativity scene on it. Not unusual.

Jason was turning twenty-seven that year, and every birthday except for the first one had pretty much sucked shit. For him, anyway. For cheap relatives and friends, it was the perfect excuse to continue being thrifty bastards.

He tore open the envelope_. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday_!

That was par for the course.

He had been born thirty minutes after midnight on the twenty-fifth of December, limp and blue from a kink in the umbilical cord, and his mother loved to mention that the best Christmas gift of her life was hearing him cry for the first time. "No one came to see us that day," she recounted. "They were too busy opening presents and cooking and all that you know--happy stuff. Grandma Fisher tried to come down to the hospital but her car conked out in the driveway, and my sister wouldn't let her go out in the snow. I let her hear about it later, she was always making decisions for our mother like that.

But it didn't matter, honey. I was just so happy you were OK."

She often overcompensated when he was a child and found the dreaded dual-occasion tags on his gifts by producing extra presents later in the month, wrapped in birthday paper and claiming that Aunt So-and-so had forgotten to give it to him on his birthday since they were so busy with everything else. It didn't take him that long to catch on that having a birthday fall on the most celebrated American holiday sucked more than an industrial Hoover at a confetti convention.

He had never had a proper birthday party in the entirety of elementary school; sleepovers with pizza and cake came a week later, and that was only if everyone wasn't gone to visit out-of-town family for the holiday season. Anyway, it felt rather false to blow out candles on a cake when the actual event had already passed. He couldn't get a driver's license after his sixteenth until the DMV reopened in mid-January. His Selective Service registration got lost in the mounds of outgoing Christmas mail at the post office and nearly screwed him when he applied for college financial aid. He turned twenty-one quietly at home, toasting the occasion with his first legal beer with his father in their kitchen before the relatives came over for ham and Christmas presents.

Every birthday gift was wrapped in red and green. Every cake had a frosting tree or snowman face. Friends would usually text instead of call. "_Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday_!" was pretty much the status quo. His little sister had a normal birthday on a random day in October and wouldn't intentionally rub it in, but it happened anyway.

True to his nature, Jason never complained.

True to her nature, Raye noticed. And asked.

He simply shrugged. "I'm used to it."

She let her gaze dance over the almost imperceptible flicker on the corner of his mouth as he suddenly busied himself at his workstation and "hmm'ed" to herself. She didn't bring it up again until they were lying in bed that night.

Raye flipped on her side to face him, but he beat her to the punch. "I don't talk about it because I don't want to sound like a self-centered whiny asshole."

"What?"

"Only self-centered whiny assholes create issues out of nothing because they don't get enough hugs or whatever. Besides, it's not like I can change it."

She reached out and cupped his face gently with her fingertips. "It's not self-centered, Jason."

"Like hell it's not. I don't want to be an idiot, I just..." He shifted around, trying to avoid eye contact. The radiator across the room clicked on and started tapping as it heated up. Raye waited for him to continue.

He still wouldn't look at her. "It just sucks sometimes. Everyone else gets a day, so they don't know, but like...I've never had that day."

She leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead, a plan formulating in her mind.

* * *

Christmas Eve kicked off their normal holiday routine; they ducked out of work early, emptied their bladders, loaded the gassed-up Chevelle, and began the slow crawl out of the city with the thousands of other souls heading home. His parents' house was decked out with brand new LED fairy lights, complete with a plastic snowman next to the door, and they were waiting for them inside with dinner ready. Mr. Aino had tried out Alton Brown's recipe for mulled wine and needed guinea pigs to do a taste test; it tasted like drinking pure cinnamon.

After dinner, Jason settled in to watch a college Bowl game with his father when Raye entered the room and planted herself directly in front of the television. "I told some friends of mine that we'd meet them for drinks tonight."

He tried to peer around her. "Have fun."

She crossed her arms. "Did you miss the part where I said 'we'?"

Jason stretched forward on the recliner and tried to nudge her out of the way with his toe. "Are you serious? It's freezing outside!"

"So?"

"It's Christmas Eve!"

"And?"

He gestured wildly at the television. "You're shitting me, right? It's the third quarter!"

"Jason, don't swear at her."

"Dad, I can't help it. She's gone insane."

Raye flipped her hair over her shoulder and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. "You know, I really don't want to fight with you about this. Can't you just suck it up for a couple of hours?"

"No! Raye. Come on, I'm tired, I sat in traffic for how many freaking hours, I just want to relax and watch the game and then go to bed."

She was not one to give up so easily. "If you go, I will not fight with you on where to go for New Year's Eve."

That got his attention; they usually had an annual fight over New Year's plans, since he was usually tied up with his band and then liked to jump around the after parties, while Raye preferred to stay in with champagne and Carson Daly. More than once, the fight was brutal enough where they didn't reconcile until moments before midnight.

"You should take my car," Jason's father suggested, jumping up. "I'll get the keys."

Thirty minutes later Jason stared out at the frozen darkness as the miles passed by. "Raye, where are we going?"

"It's a bit out of town."

They passed an exit. "What the hell?"

"Jason, I told you, it's a bit out of town!" she exploded. "Just relax, OK!? I want to have a good time tonight and you're being such a jerk about _everything_."

"I am being a jerk? Really?" His voice knocked off the inside of the windshield and amplified. "You're dragging me out in the middle of the night when it's like five fucking degrees--"

She held up a finger. "Do _not _cuss at me!"

"_Sorry_. I just don't see how I'm the jerk when I didn't want to go in the first place and all I did was ask where the hell we're going!"

"We're going _out_," Raye hissed through clenched teeth. "I already told you."

"In the middle of freaking nowhere!"

"Jason, just shut up and try not to ruin my night more than you already have, all right?"

He seriously entertained the thought of throwing himself out of the speeding car and onto the highway but pulled his hat down over his eyes and mentally screamed instead.

She pulled up to a corner bar with neon signs in the darkened windows and a wreath on the door. Jason did a double take. "Really? We drove all the way out here to go to this dive?"

She threw him a dark look and slammed the door. "God, just get inside. Try to pull the stick out of your ass while you're at it."

"Funny, that's what I'm usually saying to you," he muttered under his breath, and jogged through the snow to the front door.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

The inside of the corner bar was just as quaint as the front. The lights were low, the bar stools were mismatching, the coasters were made of paper cardboard and damp with spilled beer, and all the glasses were promos for domestic lite beerwater. A slightly scratched pool table squatted near the back near a row of pitted dartboards and a fake plastic tree decked with tired white lights. Elvis crooned on the jukebox about his blue Christmas. It looked exactly like a million neighborhood watering holes, right down to the mildly cute bartender chatting it up with a pair of well-worn men wearing greasy coveralls and nursing half-finished drafts.

But unlike every other neighborhood bar, four of Jason's closest friends were splitting a pitcher at a table with a bunch of multicolored helium balloons tied to it.

He promptly felt like the world's biggest asshole.

Serena bounced out of her seat and threw herself at him. "OH MY GOSH HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I'm so, _so_ sorry every one of them sucked before! Raye told us all about it and I can't even imagine never having a proper birthday party!"

Jason accepted Serena's hug with numb arms and caught Raye's eye. She was positively dripping with smug satisfaction.

Now he felt like the inflamed hemorrhoids hanging out of the world's biggest asshole.

Noah and Darien gave him bro-hugs, and Makoto gave him a real one that had marvelous gigantic boobs squished into it. "How did you guys get out here?"

"Oh, well," Serena explained, settling in. "Raye and I picked a place that was equal distance for all of us to drive, and Darien and I have a car coming for us at one."

"My dad's got the baby," Noah explained, pouring Jason a beer. "We told her that Mommy and I have to pick up Santa from the airport."

"Why wouldn't Santa just take his sleigh?" Raye asked.

"Because! There's too much air traffic these days and the reindeers come separately." Noah answered like he had explained this a million times before. "She and my father are sprinkling reindeer food in the backyard."

"Reindeer food?" Darien said, raising an eyebrow.

"Stale Wheaties."

"Ah. Damn, you guys should write a book."

Makoto took a sip of beer. "I think we _did_ get that out of a book."

Raye kept checking the door. "Where is everyone else?"

Darien picked up his iPhone and started scrolling. "Coming. I gave Zach directions and Kevin and Mina got a late start. They'll be here soon. Oh, and Zach might bring his 'friend' who is really Serena's friend but he thinks he's the only person to discover her. In the meantime—" He pulled a wrapped box off the floor and pushed it across the table. "Happy birthday, man. May you have many more years of enjoying the slow crawl towards sagging balls and death."

"Well, when you put it that way," Jason said, tearing off the birthday paper. His eyes widened. "Darien."

"What?"

He dropped the package to his lap and looked up. "This is two thousand dollar scotch."

Darien killed the rest of his beer in a single swallow. "You said that's what you wanted."

"I was kidding! I didn't really expect that you'd buy it for me!"

His friend shrugged, completely nonplussed. "Open the card."

The card was a Christmas one, but Jason barely noticed after picking up what fell out of it. "Are you serious? Courtside seats?"

"Mmm!" Darien hucked down the mouthful of beer and waved at him. "There is a stipulation for those: you're taking me, and not Raye."

"Hey!" she immediately protested.

"Sorry honey, but these are for boys' night. Go get your nails done or something." He ducked Raye's swat and regrouped. "Hey man, happy birthday and Merry Christmas! I had to make up for years of people screwing you over."

Inside, he felt like falling apart like a little boy, but he kept it in. "Thanks man. Appreciate it."

Serena started clapping. "Open mine! The tickets are a Christmas present from both of us, but I got you a birthday present, too!" Her eyes were a bit glassy as she sighed. "I think it's so cute that you're birthday's on Christmas, even if it sucks for you sometimes. If I had a baby on Christmas, I would dress him in little Santa suits like _all_ the time!"

"Been there," Jason grunted, tearing off the paper of her gift. "Aw, thanks, Serena!"

"What is it?" Makoto said, craning her neck.

"New watch." He opened the box and held it up for her to see. "Wait a minute." He swiveled to face Serena. "Please tell me you bought this on the street in Chinatown."

She huffed. "Of course not."

"Then it's real." He gulped.

"Yes. You think I would give you a fake watch for your birthday?"

"I can't accept this. It's too much."

She shushed him and pushed the watch back at him. "Listen, let's just say it's to make up for all the crappy Christmas sweaters you probably got growing up, and I'm sure there's a lot."

The Goodwill in his hometown had fourteen years worth of Jason Aino Christmas sweaters, and he presumed that they remained there unsold to this very day. He turned to Raye. "Look at this. I'm going to be one of those guys that wears this kind of watch."

She patted his arm. "Say thank you."

"Thank you, Serena." She smiled brightly and grabbed a handful of pretzels out of the bowl.

Makoto reached down for a shopping bag at her feet. "Well, that's a tough act to follow, but here. Happy birthday."

The box had a familiar shape. "New kicks! Thanks man!"

"Not just new kicks," Noah said. "Lebron's new kicks. Maybe they'll improve your game a bit."

"Is that why you were trying to look at my shoes when we were at the gym?"

"Did you really think I wanted to see what your insoles looked like? I didn't want to get the wrong size."

"You could have just asked. And there's nothing wrong with my game, assface." The next box contained a Threadless tshirt and a tin of homemade peppermint bark.

Serena gasped. "You can't get that and not share with us!"

"What?" Raye interjected. "Serena, she just gave you a giant box of that last week! Don't tell me you plowed through it already."

She popped open the tin and helped herself to a piece of bark. "It tastes good with coffee! Besides, I just gave your boyfriend a Cartier; the least he can do is share his candy!"

The door banged open, and every head in the establishment turned to the flurry of damp cotton of a navy hoodie and curly blonde hair. Zach stomped over to the table, picked up a napkin, and threw it in Darien's face. "Your directions were garbage and the stupid GPS sent us to another 'Frankie's' in another town. He pulled out his phone and hit a button. "Hey Kevin, you were right: wrong town. Turn around and take the exit after the Wawa. The one that looks like you'll get diarrhea from the fake McMuffins. Yeah. Follow the smell." He hung up. "Stupid piece of shit GPS. I almost ran out of fucking gas."

Darien threw the napkin back. "Hey, Willie Nelson, don't get mad at me because you drive a tin can hippiemobile that runs on hemp oil or whatever the hell you fill up with. Hi, Amy."

Serena's friend lit up when her friend appeared. "Amy! I'm so glad you came! And with Zach!"

The petite girl gave a short, forced smile and sat down at the end of the table. "Happy birthday, Jason. Thanks for inviting me."

"No problem," he said. Raye switched seats so that Amy was closer to the group. "Thanks for coming all this way."

"It's not a problem, I mean, I wasn't driving but—" She stopped and seemed to try a different track. "I'm happy to be here…thanks for, I mean, I said that already, um..."

"Want a drink?" Noah pushed the pitcher of beer across the table.

"She doesn't drink beer," Zach said gruffly, ruffling water out of his hair. "Anyone want to partake in a mystery drink of my choosing?"

Raye set down her glass. "As long as it's not body shots, I'm down. I have to drive back, don't forget."

"Ah crap, there goes my plan of getting you wasted and hoping you'll dance on the bar. Anyone else?" He rose out of his seat and thrust a pair of boxes at Jason. "Happy birthday, point."

"Thanks." Jason opened the first box, which was wrapped in spangled blue paper. "Socks and boxer shorts. Thanks, Grandpa."

"Hey, what do you expect? I'm Jewish. If I threw in a belt and a wallet, you'd pretty much be an official Red Sea Pedestrian. Happy Hanukkah, even though it was last week. I don't do Christmas unless I'm parasiting on Kevin's family."

"You can never have too many socks and drawers," Jason agreed. "Thank you."

"Open the other one."

He did. "Johnnie Walker Blue? Can't complain!"

Zach hopped to the bar and came back bearing glasses. "The bartender said that usually this place doesn't allow BYOB, but since it's your birthday Jace, she says she'll make an exception. Also, she thinks you're cute."

"Blue it is!" Darien said, clapping his hands together in anticipation. "Save the good scotch for a special occasion, like licking it off of Raye's naked body."

"This isn't the good scotch?" Makoto said, watching Darien pop the bottle out of the box and crack the seal.

"You've run with me for how long now? C'mon, Mommy, you know I don't fuck around when it comes to cars, cigars, and alcohol."

Noah watched the interchange of dialogue with a curious expression. "Get me the good shit for my birthday, then."

Darien smirked. "I'll get it for you anyway, bro. You fixed my water heater."

"I turned the thermostat up! A trained helper monkey could have done that."

"But Darien can't!" He started pouring a few fingers in each glass. "Darien likes having other people get their hands dirty so he doesn't have to."

"Damn, if I knew that I would have remodeled your entire bathroom."

"You offer, I accept. I hope you like laying tile.

Anyway," Darien said, as Raye passed the glasses around. "To Jason." The table followed his lead and raised their glasses. Jason hoped that his face wasn't turning as red as it felt. "I hope tonight erases a few of the shittier birthdays you've had in the past, and if it doesn't, then uh, well, I hope that we can get you drunk enough that you forget this one, too."

"Oh, I think we can," Zach quipped, unzipping his hoodie. The t-shirt underneath had a peace symbol made of leaves and the words "Free the Seed" on it.

Darien waggled an eyebrow. "I second that. OK, well, happy birthday, man. You're a great guy, a kick-ass musician, a decent baller, a shitty poker player, and since Raye has stuck with you this long, I'll presume that you're a slightly better than average lay. I think I speak for everyone here when I say that we're all lucky to know you and to consider you a friend. Here's to you, happy birthday."

"Happy birthday," the table echoed. Jason stared at his glass for a moment before tossing it back, feeling a warm glow that had nothing to do with the alcohol penetrate his insides. Underneath the table, Raye found his hand and gave it a squeeze. He squeezed back. _Thank you._

The front door opened with a ring of jingle bells. "You guys didn't wait for us?" Mina cried, pulling her hat off and releasing a golden curtain. Kevin entered behind her, and his glasses fogged up the moment he stepped through the door and hit warm air.

"Damn," he muttered.

Zach pulled the bottle over and refilled his glass. "Sorry Mina, when the party starts at Frankie's, it _starts_. We can't wait for stupid yuppies who can't read a GPS."

She ignored him and swept Jason into a frozen hug. "Happy birthday, big brother."

"Thanks," he whispered, remembering the times that he had been jealous of her normal birthday. It didn't seem to matter now. "Didn't think you were coming."

"What are you, nuts?" she giggled, peeling off her coat and pulling off Kevin's glasses. "By the way, I hope Mom didn't put too much crap in my old room because we're crashing there tonight. There's no way we're driving all the way back to the Chaston compound."

"We've got a car coming Mina, you can come with us," Serena offered, before reading the expression on the other woman's face. "Or not. We can see you at dinner."

"Any requests?" Noah shouted from the jukebox. "If not, you're getting Sublime."

"Do you really want me to sing?" Zach yelled back. The opening chords of "Santeria" started playing. "Oh crap, now I Have To Sing. Amy, I'm sorry, I don't think it's humanely possible for me to restrain myself when the spirit moves me."

"I know," she said. "I was in the car with you."

Kevin fumbled in his pockets. "I don't think I have a lens cleaner." He blinked, tried to focus his eyes, and then gave up and started feeling the table for a napkin. "Damn it."

Raye stopped her drink halfway to her mouth. "Good God, Kevin, are you really that blind?"

He threw a look in her general direction, but his eyes missed and focused on the table behind her. Jason started laughing. "Hey, how many fingers am I holding up?"

"Uh," he replied, squinting across the table. "Four?"

Jason lowered the single index finger that he had been holding up. "You're kidding, right?"

"Three?"

Makoto cupped a hand over her mouth to hide her giggle. "You really _are_ that blind!"

"G-d, just grow a pair and get them lasered already," Zach helpfully suggested, then launched into song without missing a beat. "_Believe me when I say that I've got something for his punk ass!" _

"There is no way someone is going to peel off my corneas and burn them while I still have breath."

"They give you Valium, you know."

"There is not enough Valium in the world."

"Whatever, you giant cunt. Hey, do me a favor." Zach jumped up and dashed to the dartboard. He pulled a dart out of the cork and returned to the table with it. "See how you do throwing a dart without your glasses."

Kevin picked them off the table and held them eye level. "Why?"

"Why? Uh, hi, because it will be _funny_. "

"Do it, Kevin," Darien urged, pushing the dart towards him. "Jason, make him do it."

Jason nodded. "I think you should do it."

"No, I'm not here for your amusement."

Zach snorted. "Kevin, just throw the fucking thing. If you can hit the dartboard—hell, if you can hit within a foot of it, I'll do carbombs until I'm puking." He caught a glimpse of Amy's wary expression and quickly amended his previous statement. "Or not. Maybe just one."

"Throw it," Raye said, jumping up. "Here, I'll tell you what. We'll both throw, and whoever get closest wins. The loser has to do a shot."

"I have to drive."

"Oh, don't give me that bullshit, Kevin. I've seen you drink; you can handle a single shot."

He grunted. "I'm not doing any apple pie girl shots."

"Why are so convinced you're going to lose?"

"Because I'm doing this blind!"

"Want me to take out my contacts? Tell you what, I'll shut my eyes."

Kevin tried to focus his eyes on her again and failed. "You're on." He reached for his glasses, but Darien pulled them away.

"You're doing it all blind, buddy. No cheating."

"Well, this isn't fair."

"_This isn't fair,_" Zach mimicked in a high-pitched voice. "_Wah, I'm scared of competition. I need a fresh tampon and someone to tuck me in at night."_

That statement must have struck a chord, because it had Kevin stumbling over chairs in his haste to get to the dartboard.

"On three," Raye said, getting into position. Kevin tried glaring at her but missed again.

"Three." The darts knocked into surface in quick succession: Raye's hitting a hair off the bullseye, and Kevin's buried in the wall a foot away from the board.

Her victory dance included finger guns. "Kev, that was terrible."

"I don't have my glasses on!"

"Oh God, here's my phone: call the waaah-mbulance," Darien cackled. "Bartender! What is the most awful tasting shot that you can make?"

The winning concoction was a soupy mixture of crème de menthe, Absolut Peppar and Goldschlager. Kevin sniffed it and recoiled. "I'll vomit if I drink that."

"Don't lose next time."

"I couldn't see!"

"Neither could I!" Raye countered. Of course, her eyes had been open the entire time, but Kevin couldn't see that.

While the rest of the group goaded Kevin into voluntarily vomiting, Jason opened the remaining birthday gifts: a new Wacom tablet and a ukulele. "I needed this," he said, examining the box for the drawing tablet. "And I wanted this." He picked out a few chords on the ukulele, already blocking out an afternoon in the future to practice on it. "Thanks Mina."

She smiled and sipped on club soda. "Raye thought of the whole thing. I'm sorry I never noticed how much your birthday bothered you before, especially since I was always so jealous."

Jason turned to face her. "Are you serious? Jealous of me?"

"Well, yeah." At the other end of the table, Kevin took a breath and downed the shot to enthusiastic applause. Noah and Zach were racking up balls on the pool table. "Our entire family was always around to celebrate your birthday, and like, Uncle Marty and Aunt Bets never even showed up for half of mine."

Aunt Bets was one of the more consistent double-gifters. "You say this because you've never had a fake birthday party. It's different when you have your friends with you."

They watched more events unfold: Makoto, Serena and Amy chatting over vodka tonics and chardonnay, a now-bespectacled Kevin and Darien starting another round of darts, and Noah malingering around the jukebox as he waited for Zach to take his shot. "I guess you're right," Mina said. "Thanks for ruining like, half of my sleepovers, by the way."

"Ruining? I was the best part of your sleepovers. Those girls are probably still talking about the hockey mask incident."

"You mean, those girls are probably still talking about the hockey mask incident to their therapists. Oh, by the way, Kevin is going to give you your Christmas present tomorrow. I won't tell you what it is, but it involved snowboards and a high elevation town in Colorado."

Jason's eyebrows sprung up. "No shit! Seriously?"

"Seriously. Please make sure no one ends up a widow, would you? It's boys-only, so we won't be there to talk you guys out of unnecessary risks."

"Yeah, OK," he agreed mindlessly, already envisioning the chalet they would be staying in. Kevin never did anything halfway. Hell, he probably owned it. "God, I love that blind bastard."

Makoto waved over the group to the end of the table. "Cake time! It's an experimental one, so tell me what you think and be brutally honest. Sorry in advance if it's not good."

"She wouldn't even let me try it," Noah groused.

"What kind is it?" Serena was watching Makoto pop the top off a Tupperware cake box with the attentiveness of a pointer hound.

"Mint chocolate chip."

"Mint chocolate chip!"

"Yeah, Raye said it was your favorite ice cream flavor, Jace."

Zach pulled a face. "Ugh."

"What do you mean, 'ugh'?" Makoto looked like she wanted to smack him with the plastic lid.

"'Ugh' because mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes like toothpaste with bits of chocolate mixed in."

"You've eaten it before, I've watched you," Jason said.

"That's because I was st—_hungry_. I'll eat anything when I'm…hungry."

"Luckily, it's not your birthday, so we don't care," Makoto said, swatting at Zach's head and smacking Serena's hand away with the same motion. "So shut up and give me your lighter."

No snowmen or Christmas trees on this cake; Makoto had created a confection at least four inches high with dark chocolate frosting, and light purple curls of fondant that formed the message and his name on the top. _Happy Birthday Jason!_

"Sorry about the purple; I let Aja pick the color."

Raye's mouth dropped. "Did you make your own fondant?"

"Yep. Why?"

"She's been watching a lot of _Ace of Cakes_," Noah helpfully explained. "Which means I have been watching a lot of _Ace of Cakes_."

Serena gasped. "I love _Ace of Cakes_!"

"Noah, I was just about to bust your balls about that, but my wife just destroyed my credibility," Darien said. "Light the damn cake, Zach."

This had happened before, but not like this. This time it felt like they were celebrating him and not the holiday, and it felt good to finally give in and be selfish for a change. Jason would always be grateful for his family, but good friends were hard to come by, especially ones who would drive to the middle of nowhere in the dead of night on your birthday. Which also happened to be on Christmas.

The cake ended up being awesome. The regulars at the bar suggested to Makoto that she should open her own bakery, and she smiled and told them she'd keep that in mind.

It was after one in the morning when they started clearing out. Noah and Makoto were the first to leave, Makoto giving Jason one last breast-filled hug before driving off. Darien and Serena had a car waiting for them, and Zach handed Amy his keys before taking off. Kevin was grimacing and rubbing his midsection. "Let me follow you to the highway. That GPS lies."

"You OK, man?"

Kevin directed his answer to Raye. "It was that shot. Didn't know you had such good aim."

"I have _perfect_ aim," Raye smirked. "You should see me with a bow and arrow."

"See you in a bit!" Mina said, hopping into the passenger seat of the Mercedes and waited for Kevin to join.

Jason joined Raye in his father's car. She started the ignition and immediately turned on the heat. "Damn, it's cold."

"Raye?"

"Hmm?" Jason could tell she had been waiting for this just by the way she dropped that single syllable. He sucked in his breath in preparation for groveling.

"I'm sorry I was such an asshole before." He batted away a helium balloon that had been drifting towards his head and took her hand. Her fingers were cold. "I don't deserve you."

"Stop," she said, brushing her bangs away from her face. In the bluish moonlight, her face lit up like the star on top of their tree. "You know me. You know I would have reacted in the same way if it were the other way around. Actually, worse."

"Yes, that's true."

"Hey!" Her eyes flashed fire, but her smile was soft as she dropped her gaze in an uncharacteristic moment of shyness. "Happy birthday, babe."

He leaned forward and kissed her, his hand brushing her velvety cheek as he pressed his lips against hers, savoring the warmth of her mouth and the faint rose flavor of her lipstick. He broke away just long enough to whisper, "I love you so much, you don't even know."

She opened those magnificent violet eyes and pinned him with her gaze, the way she always did. "I do." Her fingers entwined with his under the warm jet of air from the heating vent. "I do."

They were reaching for each other again before being interrupted by a blast from a car horn. Jason pulled back and heaved a sigh. "Mina."

"Hey!" Her voice shouted out between cars. "Can you make out at home, please? I want to get home and crash already."

He flipped her off as Raye put the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. The roads were dark, frozen and silent in the early hours of Christmas morning. Jason flipped on the radio and skipped any station playing carols.

"So I was thinking," Raye started as she turned onto the highway. "Why we don't we hit a party on New Year's? I'm sure Darien will throw one."

"Really? Huh." He tilted his head in agreement. "Sounds like a plan, but only if we can leave before midnight. I wanted to catch the countdown on TV. Maybe order pizza, rent some movies, fall asleep on the couch?"

"I think I like that plan." She grinned. "By the way, I didn't give you your birthday present yet."

"Really? Can I have it now?"

"Not now," she purred. "Wait until we get home."

He gently squeezed the top of her leg. "Will I like it?"

"I think you'll really like it."

"How?"

She gave him a cool glance before turning her eyes back to the road. "I'll let you fall asleep right afterwards. And you can have the good pillow."

"Hot damn, if I didn't know any better, I'd think it was my birthday!"

There was one more surprise waiting for him when they got back to his parents' house. "Oh Dad," Jason groaned, taking in the pressboard decorated with fairy lights that spelled out "Happy birthday Jason" in blinking multicolored lights. He had even stuck it right over the front door for the whole neighborhood to see. "He didn't have to do that."

"And I didn't have to do this," Raye countered, drawing him close and kissing him again. "God, I love you so much, you have no idea."

"I do," he replied, impressing this moment into his permanent memory. He could not forget this day, ever.


	20. Acronym

Moments after birth, it was clearly apparent that there was a serious problem with Jacob Aaron Anthony Radway.

It was irreparable. There was nothing that modern medicine could do for his situation. It would encompass his entire life, influencing every aspect, from the major to the mundane, to his dress and speech and emotions and thought processes. He would never live a moment without being aware of the situation; it would be a permanent part of his identity and anatomy for the rest of his natural life.

The problem was that he lacked the necessary equipment to _be_ Jacob Aaron Anthony Radway.

His father tried to numbly deny it when he heard the news over the newborn's gurgling cries. "That's not right; he's supposed to be a boy."

The surgeon, masked and covered in mint green scrubs, gave him a blank, bored look behind his plastic eye shields; after all, it was two in the morning. "That's the only one in there, son. The technician must have misread the ultrasound."

"She's a ten." The pediatric nurse held out a wrapped bundle with a pink face in the middle for Noah to accept in shaking arms. "What a little darling."

"Noah?" Makoto's face was almost pure white with fear. "What's wrong?"

He snapped out of it. "Nothing. Nothing at all. But, um, Jacob's a girl."

"What?" If she hadn't been drugged up within an inch of her life, and lying on a surgical table with her abdomen cut open like a gutted fish, she probably would have had a stronger reaction than just a confused whisper.

When they worked it out later, it was easiest to blame a sloppy technician and the last-minute change in obstetricians and medical records for the mix-up, which wouldn't have been such a shock if they hadn't been referring to the baby as "Jacob" the entire time, complete with a blue nursery waiting at home and a new entry in the Radway family tree--which would probably have to whited-out and corrected, or however his grandmother chose to fix it. There had to have been someone amongst the branches who was mislabeled by gender, too.

Many stitches and a few staples later, they had a short conference about their child before allowing Makoto to recover from surgery. Noah fumbled with paperwork as she ran a finger down her daughter's tiny face, accidentally dragging an IV tube over the baby as well. The newborn let out an indignant squawk.

"Well, what should we name her?"

Makoto's eyes were drooping with exhaustion. "I don't know. You should name her."

He started. "Me? Are you kidding? I don't know any girl names."

She threw him a look that clearly expressed that she thought him an amusing idiot, and strangely, the baby was looking at him that way, as well. The resemblance was uncanny. "I trust you. Please, though, nothing with more than one 'y', or any type of car or city name. Or alcoholic beverage."

He chewed on the cap of his pen. "We could name her after your mom."

Her eyes flew open, and she tucked the baby closer to her body; she had to keep her under her arm like a football to avoid contact with her incision. "Are you serious? You really want to name our daughter 'Imaculada'?" She shuddered. "What about your mother?"

"_Maureen?_ God, no. And don't even suggest my stepmother."

Makoto smiled softly; the lights in the recovery room were dimmed, and the baby was warm nestled next to her. They were both falling asleep. "You'll think of something."

Noah's phone beeped; his family was here. He left Makoto to rest and seemed to float out of the room, his head muzzled with sleep deprivation and avoidance of thinking about the new set of crushing responsibilities that he had not mentally prepared for. A little boy he could handle: he was the third of four boys, and running in a pack was his natural state of being. Even his father had seemed more confident at the news of the gender, when at first he had been the most apprehensive at the news that his son was going to be a rather young father. A little girl came with an entirely different set of rules, and neither of his parents had any experience that he could draw from. Perhaps Paloma…but that would require talking to her at length, and he still was not comfortable doing that.

A little girl. What if she wanted to date one day?

What if she wanted to date _men?_

Men were filthy, disgusting, hormonal animals, and he should know because he was one. Maybe they should start looking into the cost of single-sex education. Or home schooling.

He found both sides of Radways taking up most of the chairs in the waiting room, laden down with coats and baggage and bearing a variety of powder blue balloons and flowers. The smell of fresh coffee wafted towards him, and only then did he realize that it was early in the morning. As soon as he walked in the room, everyone jumped up and screamed.

Just as predicted, Noah's mother was the first to rush and embrace him, her eyes tired and red. "Oh my God, sweetie, how is he? When can we see him?"

Noah's older brother Jacob, one third of his child's namesake, was slapping him on the back hard enough to sting. "Hey, Dad! When do we get to meet the little guy?" Anthony, the oldest, playfully punched him a few times in the stomach.

He struggled with his voice as his Aunt June rushed up and hugged him against her gigantic bosom. "Um, everyone, there's something, um..."

Perhaps it was his face that tipped them off; his father was the first to notice. "What's wrong, son?"

"Um."

Noah's mother grabbed his arm, her face falling like a tumbling landslide. "Oh God, oh no, what happened? Is it Jacob? What's wrong with him? Is Makoto all right?" Behind her, his grandmother quickly blessed herself and kissed her fingers.

Every eye was on him, and Noah ran a hand through his disheveled hair before dropping the bomb. "The baby's a girl."

For a moment, no one spoke, until his stepsister finally broke the silence with the aplomb of a bowling ball through a car windshield. "You're fucking kidding."

"Monalisa," her mother—Noah's stepmother—scolded, and turned back to him. "Really? What a—ho boy, what a surprise! We didn't see this coming, that's for sure; but well, what does it matter? A little girl is perfect, too! How is she?"

The rest of the room was still shocked into immobility when he accepted Paloma's hug. His brothers glanced guiltily at the "It's A Boy!" balloons they had tied to the arm of a chair, especially the one that measured about two feet across and was shaped like Thomas the Tank Engine. There was an arrangement of blue spray painted carnations on a side table, and his other stepsister Claudemonet had just stepped out of the elevator with a basket crammed full of baby blue layette items. She held it up like a heavyweight championship belt. "Heeeey! Look what I got for Jacob! Where is he?"

His mother's face was still frozen in shock. "But I had the Tiffany rattle monogrammed! And the receiving blanket…and the bassinet is blue, too…"

Noah's father made a face at his ex-wife. "Does it really matter that much, Maureen?"

"Of course it matters! It matters because—well, what are you naming her sweetie?" By the look on her face, she was clearly hoping for something that could still salvage the "J.A.A.R." on the monogrammed rattle.

"We don't know yet." Somewhere behind him, he could hear his brothers snickering. "We have to think of something."

Paloma waved off that information, as if the child's permanent moniker was but a minor detail. Unusual for a woman who had named her daughters what she did. "That's fine, that's fine. How's Makoto? Is she OK?"

"Yeah, yeah," Noah said, running his hand through his hair again. "She's fine, she's resting. Um." He couldn't stand all the focus on him; unlike Jacob, he never actively fought for attention in his family. "Do you want to see the baby?"

"No, you idiot, we want to sit here all day and listen to Mom freak out about monogrammed rattles." Anthony dropped his coat into his girlfriend's lap. "Let's meet the little guy—er, girl."

The baby was asleep in the plastic bassinet next to her sleeping mother's bed, and a card had been taped to the front that listed her birth date, time, and height and weight, and printed at the top with "Baby Girl Radway" in black marker. Noah carefully wheeled the bassinet out to the waiting room, his eyes focused on his daughter's slumbering form the entire time. Who knew that ears could be so tiny, he thought, feeling like he had just discovered a new planet or species or something. He wanted to touch one just to prove to himself that it was real, but if he accidentally woke her, she might cry, and the thought of doing that filled him with cold terror. He prayed that his apprehension wore off by the time they had to take her home; otherwise he was ready to turn in his Daddy Card and look into becoming a monk in Tibet.

Any misgivings his family had about the new revelation melted away when the bassinet arrived in the waiting room. The celebration was certainly quieter, and to Noah, it was a rapid introduction to the difference that a single chromosome made.

"She looks like…not you," Jacob supplied helpfully, carefully stroking the top of the baby's head.

Aaron, the youngest Radway brother, had to fight to squeeze between the family members to get a glimpse of his niece. "Yeah, she does. I think she does."

Before--back when he was still a stupid kid with no responsibilities and not a care in the world besides what and where to drink that weekend--Noah would have scoffed at Aaron and probably hit him, but at this moment he was grateful for the affirmation, even if it was coming from a kid brother barely out of high school.

His family didn't seem to want to leave. Noah checked on his wife several times, once finding her with Paloma sitting at the end of her bed and pulling a pair of socks onto Makoto's feet. "Did you think of a name yet?" she asked him quietly.

"You have to help me," he pleaded. A sixty-minute nap had done nothing to clear his head, and he was growing tired of the lively suggestions that were tossed him at the average of one a second. So far the dumbest idea had been "Molly", after his ex-girlfriend, and he had Anthony to thank for that gem. "At least do her middle name. I'll even let Imaculada slide in for that."

Makoto shook her head. "I love my mother, but if she were alive, she would wring my neck for sticking my baby with that. She hated her name."

"I think it's nice," Paloma said mildly, adjusting the blankets over Makoto's legs. Noah resisted the urge to scream that her opinion had no merit, considering that she named her own daughter "Claudemonet" but she was being rather tolerable, and Makoto had always liked her.

Noah yawned and wondered where he could procure more coffee as he picked up the paperwork again. "I have something in mind."

Makoto winced as she moved into a more comfortable position. "Oh good, as long as it's not Isabel, or anything that sounds like it. My ex-boyfriend dumped me for a _puta _with that name, that useless scumbag."

He hastily crossed the "I" and "s" off the form he was filling out and was back to square one.

* * *

He had another visitor around mid-morning, one most welcome, because of the coffee he was bearing. "Congratulations!" He grabbed Noah in a one-armed hug and pressed the Starbucks cup against his chest. "How you doing, Dad?"

Noah turned his weary eyes up to Jason. "Are you ready for this?"

Jason was very good with children, including those who were very formerly fetuses. He wasn't intimidated when the baby started wailing, but instinctively switched her to lie against his shoulder and made hushing noises until she calmed down. Noah nearly suggested that Jason should go home with his wife and child instead of himself when they were ready to check out. Makoto watched Jason gently rock her daughter back to sleep with a beatific smile on her face. "She likes you, Jason."

He winked at her. "All girls do. Did you know that my parents thought Mina was going to be a boy, too?"

Noah hadn't known. "Really?"

"Yeah, they had a name for her and everything. I was super-pissed; I thought I was getting a brother. I think I even threw a snotty little kid fit over it. Well, anyway, that's why they named her after our grandmother. They needed a girl name, and fast."

Noah turned to face Makoto. "Want to name her after Mina?"

She shook her head. "No. And her name is actually 'Philomena'."

"Really? Yuck." It was hard to associate the knockout blonde with a name that reminded him of an old lady knitting. "What about Raye?"

"Don't give her the satisfaction," Jason said, rubbing the baby's tiny back. His hand nearly covered her entire body; she was a bit on the runty side, Noah mused. "Plus she hates her name—both of them, I guess. She shits bricks whenever someone calls her 'Rachel'."

With that, Noah gave up and chucked the whole pile of paperwork aside. "I'm officially out of fucking ideas." He groaned and rubbed his burning, dry eyes with the back of one hand.

"Hey man, watch your language in front of the kid," Jason chided, reaching up to cover the baby's tiny ears. "They pick up on that kind of shit."

"Jason, she's less than a day old. She hasn't even learned she has toes yet."

Jason gave him a long look, then bent down and slid the infant back into Makoto's arms. "Want to get out of here for awhile? Get some food or something? Maybe try to get that car seat in?"

That proposition actually sounded pretty good. "How about coffee?"

"Can I come?' Makoto joked, tucking the baby under her arm and adjusting the neckline of her onesie. She was already making it look easy. "Keep thinking of names. Can you help him, Jason?"

"I'll try my best."

They found Aaron near the elevators, trying to jam a dollar bill in a soda machine and having it repeatedly spit back out at him. Jason clapped him on the back and started dragging him away. "We have a mission, kid. You're coming with us."

Aaron momentarily sputtered but agreed. "I, um, have to tell my mom where I'm going."

"Text her. Come on. Do you have a license?"

He bristled. "_Yeah._ I'm eighteen!"

"Good, you're driving. Noah, we're taking your car."

Twenty minutes later, Noah was nervously riding shotgun while his younger brother wove the 4Runner through the highway traffic. Jason dug through the piles of trash in the backseat. "Noah, your fucking car, man."

"I've been busy."

"Too busy to throw away Dunkin' Donut cups? I think there's mold in this one. And you were going to drive the baby home in this?"

His stomach clenched at the thought. He really should have cleaned out the car. "Shut up and keep looking."

Jason threw aside a CD. "You know, for a white boy, you have the biggest hip-hop collection I've ever seen."

"You act like you don't know this already."

"I thought you'd eventually grow out of it. Pearl Jam doesn't help us much, unless you want to name her 'Pearl'."

"Sounds like a stripper," Noah grunted.

"It does."

"Shut up and watch the road, Aaron. What else you got?"

Jason flipped another CD case over and read the track list. "Rose, Sugaree, Delilah, Sugar, China Cat…OK, forget the Dead for any suggestions. How about…Debbie?"

"As in, Debbie Harry?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Fine then. Uh, Sandy, Cherie, Lita, Jackie, or Joan?"

Noah paused. "Say those again?"

"Sandy, Cherie, Lita, Jackie, Joan. And if you want to count future and past members, add Micki, Vickie and Laurie."

Aaron cut across two lanes without signaling. "I like Lita."

"Lita?" Noah echoed. "Huh. Not bad."

Jason kicked a pile of rubbish on the floor of the car. "Although man, can you think of Lita Ford without getting turned on?"

Noah rubbed his forehead. "After that, no. Keep going."

"I'm going. What about 'Kimberly'? I like that one."

Aaron piped up again. "I went to school with two Kims. They're both sluts."

"No slut names," Noah insisted. "In fact, everyone mentally catalogue every easy girl that you know of, think of her name, and then cross her name off the list."

"That eliminates like ninety percent of what I can think of," Aaron said.

Noah opened his eyes and glanced over at his younger brother. "What kind of girls are you hanging out with?"

"Obviously the easy ones," Jason said from the backseat. "We'll have another Radway-daddy soon if we're not careful. Should I just start throwing some out there?"

"Yeah, I guess. We've got nothing else."

"Lauren?"

"Aaron?"

"Three Laurens, but only two are sluts. One has her boobs showing on myspace."

"Never mind. Keep going, Jace."

"Cristina?"

That was Makoto's old Sugar name. "No!"

Jason rifled around for more CDs. "You've got a Taylor Swift CD back here."

"It's Makoto's," he said hurriedly. "And no."

"Jennifer?"

"Mom would like that," Aaron said. "She can keep the monogram."

"Screw the monogram. Jason, just go through everything you can find back there and call them off."

"You got it." Jason picked up a pile and started flipping through them again. "Gwen, Norah, Katie, Lily, Rihanna, Jessica, Donna, Karen, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Common, Raekwon, Ludacris, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Steely Dan." He stopped. "I didn't know you liked Steely Dan."

"I don't. I think it's my Dad's."

"Huh." Jason flipped it over and began reading. "You should listen to this one, it's not bad."

"You and I have very different musical tastes."

"I've noticed."

Noah was still grousing as they pulled into the parking lot of Panera Bread. "Makoto says that Panera tastes like high fructose corn shit."

"It does, but they have bagels. I'll buy."

They purchased some starch and caffeine and regrouped at a hard plastic table. Jason bit into a bagel loaded with cream cheese like it was his last meal and talked around the mouthful. "Hey, what about 'Molly'? Or would that be weird?"

Noah didn't even bother to respond to that one.

Jason swallowed. "OK, so what's preventing us from just naming the kid already? I mean, let's just pick a name, anything, am I right? Do you guys care that much about it being _meaningful_ and _unique_ or do you just want to pick something that sounds nice and get it over with?"

Noah lowered his head and stared at the pattern of poppy seeds spilling across the plastic plate. Jason was right; this really shouldn't be such a difficult decision. "Here's what sucks: Jacob was perfect."

Aaron immediately jumped in to protest. "Hey, I thought that—"

"You know what I mean. 'Jacob Aaron Anthony' was perfect: the whole thing together. It's—you know—my first kid, and it would have been cool to name him after all of my brothers, that's all." He threw his napkin down and reached for his coffee. "So now I don't know what to do. I'm not about to name her 'Monalisa Claudemonet Rainbowbrite'; that's for damn sure."

Jason took another bite. "Anyone on Makoto's side—"

"Nothing good. Unless you can think of a cute nickname for 'Imaculada'."

"What about making Jacob into a girl name?"

He grunted. "Jacoby?"

Aaron was smiling. "Antonia. We could call her 'Toni'."

"And what? Aarona?"

"Erin," Jason suggested. "'Erin' is nice."

"Aaron?"

The younger man picked at his thumbnail. "Erin Walters had sex with like, half the football team and filmed it. We called her 'Easy-E.'"

Noah let his head fall to the tabletop. "Fuck this. I'm done. You guys pick something and I'll just go along with it. And no—" he said before they could suggest it. "I'm not naming her 'Noah'. That's just stupid."

Aaron shut his mouth, but Jason perked up with renewed energy. "Back up a second, what if we fucked around with their names?"

"Huh?"

"Think about it." Jason stood up and headed towards the cash register, and returned a moment later with a ballpoint pen and a roll of register tape. He ripped off a piece and began writing. "What if we changed the letters around?"

"Change them how?"

He crossed something off the list. "Nah, that doesn't work. Hey, 'Aaron' backwards is 'Nora'. That's not too bad."

Noah tested it out. "Nora. It's not."

"What about the other two?" Aaron interjected. Being the youngest, he was constantly aware of his place in the pecking order.

"Nora Antonia…Jacoby. Crap. Jacob always messes up everything for us."

Jason scribbled again on the scrap of paper. "Bacoj?"

"Fuck it, Jace. The backwards thing isn't working."

"Fine, fine. What if we thought of something to save your mom's monogram?"

Noah groaned. "Was she still going on about that? I told her not to get the stupid things freaking monogrammed. The only people that wear monograms are those yuppie douchebags that have initials and Roman numerals after their name."

Jason ignored him and wrote "A J A" down the side of the receipt paper. "OK, give me an 'A' name."

"Apathy."

He leveled Noah with his piercing blue gaze. "Do you want my help or not?"

"Sorry. Uh, Ann."

Aaron jumped in. "Abigail."

"Oh, no not that one. There were three other 'Abigails' in the nursery last night."

"OK, I didn't know that. How about 'Angela'?"

Jason had frozen and was staring down at the paper. Noah nudged him. "Jace, did you get that? 'Angela'."

Slowly, his friend picked the pen back up and circled the three letters. "I think I got something. You guys almost finished?"

They threw out a few more names while finishing breakfast, and headed back to the car. Jason beat Noah to the shotgun side. "You sit in the back. And give me that Steely Dan CD."

Noah was too tired to protest as he passed the CD to the front seat. _Better get used to this_.

Jason threw it in the CD player and turned up the volume. "Check this out."

Trippy piano music before the drums kicked in. "This is definitely Dad's CD," Aaron said, pulling out of the parking lot. "He's played this before in the car with me."

Jason held the case up like a trophy. "Aja."

"What?"

"It's the name of the song. And well, the album. It's a classic. It's Steely Dan, bro."

The whitest hip-hop fan in the world was unimpressed. "It sounds like we should be smoking a bowl to fully appreciate it."

"That and probably dropping acid. Listen to the drums though…this shit is tight."

"Does this have a point?"

"Yeah," Jason flung the jewel case at Noah's chest. "Aja. A-J-A. Anthony Jacob Aaron. There's your damned monogram, and it's a girl name that has no slutty connotations that we know of. Aaron?"

Noah's brother shook his head. "I don't know any 'Aja's'".

He tried it out again. "It sounds like 'Asia'. Everyone is going to think she's Asian."

Jason was giving him a look. "Yeah, they're totally going to think that. I know a girl named 'April'. I don't think she's a calendar."

"That makes—"

"I know a Penny; I don't think she's currency."

Aaron got in on the joke. "I know a Mercedes."

Jason cocked his head. "And?"

"Oh, I don't know. She's a slut."

"Aaron, when we get back to the hospital, remind me to get you a shot of penicillin before your dick rots off." He turned back to Noah. "And so what if it sounds Asian? Just in case you forgot, your wife has a Japanese name, despite being a hundred percent smoking hot Brazilian, and she's done OK with it."

He tried it out again. "Aja."

"Aja," Jason echoed.

"_Aja_," Steely Dan crowed in the background.

Noah was still unsure. "I'm going to need buy-in by the boss."

"Understandable. If not, we've got a whole lot of slut-names to go with."

* * *

Jason gave him a last one-armed hug before parting at the hospital entrance. There were Radways still cluttering the corridor, clumped together in twos and threes as they chatted with each other, although the volume had been reduced to a mere fraction of what it was before. A nurse passed by Noah, muttering under her breath, wondering whether any of these people had to be at work on a Tuesday.

He frowned; someone obviously didn't have a close relationship with her family.

His wife's eyes were closed when he came in; the only other person in the room was Noah's father, who was standing and cradling the baby while making soft hushing noises to her. He looked up as Noah entered. "Hi son."

"Hey Dad."

"I guess I should be calling you that now," Dr. Radway said, smiling down at the tiny pink form curled in his arms. She was sporting a soft blue cotton cap over her head, and a few dark wisps were poking out from underneath the rim. Noah noted that it was also monogrammed; his mother was very thorough.

Noah yawned and went over to the bed to check on Makoto; her even breath sighed through her lips as she languished in exhausted slumber.

"Hey." He turned at his father's voice. "How're you doing?"

For a second, just one, Noah wanted to regress and run to his father's side, clinging to it, eyes squeezed shut, until the new, raw confusion bursting in his soul was smoothed back over by parental comfort. In his mind, he still could only reach his father's waist. He remembered the feel of the old brown sweater with the patched elbows, knew its smell of aftershave and fabric softener, and the slightly musty smell of old books and research manuals that cluttered up his office. In those first few months after the divorce, when his father was living in an old house closer to the university, Noah had felt that urge many times. But he had been ten, and too old for that shit already. He would watch with jealousy, as four-year old Aaron would take advantage of that luxury time and time again as he hung back and tried to pretend that he wasn't bothered by the crushing turn of events.

The moment passed as he remembered that he was the one who someone would be running at to make everything all better.

"I'm OK."

Noah's father smiled behind his dark beard and bounced the small body in his arms. "Makoto told me that you were going to pick her name."

"Uh, yeah. I think I have something. Actually," he smirked. "Jason thought of it."

"I'm not surprised," Dr. Radway said. "Jason's very creative."

"He actually cribbed it off of one of your CDs," Noah admitted, settling into a chair.

"Mine?"

He told his father the name, and the older man's eyebrows picked up over the top of his glasses as he nodded. "Ah, Hindu and Yoruba mythology. West African origin," he clarified off of Noah's confused expression. "Can be a patron of the forest, or a 'wild wind' that would transform normal people into magical beings."

Noah cleared his throat, trying to cut his father off at the impasse. If he picked up steam, his daughter would be learning to drive before he stopped talking. "Jason stuck the first letter of my brothers' names together and came up with that."

The baby let out a tiny cry, followed by some hacking gurgles. Dr. Radway crossed the room and held her out to Noah. "Oopsie there, grandbaby. Here, go to Daddy."

Noah pulled the baby close to him and rocked her awkwardly. "Hey, it's OK. Don't cry."

The baby's mouth opened, but not sound emerged. She closed it and opened her eyes and stared up at her father. He noticed that her eyes were dark gray, just like the book had said, and her eyebrows were so light that they were almost invisible. He didn't know why it was so amazing that she had all her body parts in miniature. She was perfect.

His father was smiling down at him and absently scratching his hair. "It doesn't seem that long ago that I was holding you like that."

Noah looked up. It wasn't often that his father mentioned him as a baby. There weren't too many pictures of him at that stage either; the glamour of a new baby had apparently worn off by the time Noah came around. "You pretty much knew what you were doing by then."

"Nope." His father turned and gathered his coat and scarf. "Every child is a new danger and possibility. You'll never get used to the wonder of it, no matter how many kids you have." He shrugged on his coat and patted his pockets. "I'll go get Aaron and take us home. We were all too anxious to sleep, so Paloma made popcorn and we played Monopoly all night. We'll come back tonight to bring you guys some dinner."

"Dad?"

He stopped at the doorway. Noah took a breath and continued. "What do you think of the name?"

Dr. Radway drummed his fingers against the doorframe before answering. "Why don't you ask her?"

"Who, Makoto or Aja?"

His father smiled and disappeared before Noah realized what he had said. He waited until he was alone with his new child and sleeping wife, and looked down at the tiny being in his arms. The pull of love was so strong that it was nearly overwhelming; he felt the tight constriction gathering in his throat as he held her close and whispered:

"My little girl's name is Aja."


	21. Blacklisted

Title: Blacklisted

* * *

The mix was perfect: Postal Service in her iPod and a swirl of purple paint that completely matched the sky outside of the gallery a few hours previous. She had ran home as fast as she could skitter in her borrowed lemon-colored sandals, and wasted no time breaking in a new canvas with a layer of the iridescent, almost alien colors of the city skyscape.

Kevin was strangely absent from her studio; an unusual occurrence, since it was a Friday, and he liked to unwind from the stressful week by watching her paint, especially in a creative frenzy like this. She didn't mind being his human fishtank, and when he finally appeared, it was long overdue.

One detail was off.

"Hey," she said, pulling an earbud out. "Why are you so dressed up?"

His expression was as blank as an empty griddle, never a good sign. "You're kidding."

"What?" She wiped her nose against her bare forearm, knowing that it was disgusting, but also knowing that he didn't care.

"Please tell me you're joking. We're running late already and we really don't want to be the ones that ruin the surprise."

The realization dropped down on her like a baby grand piano with a ton of bricks piled on top. "Oh shit! That's tonight?"

He allowed himself one exasperated full-body spasm before returning to stasis. "I reminded you last night. We talked about it, _at length_, and I thought you were getting ready this entire time, _Mina_!"

She jumped to her feet, scaring the cat, and groaned when she realized what she looked like: acrylic paint was splattered on most of the available skin surfaces, including the tops of her feet and parts of her face, her blonde hair was piled in a messy topknot, and she smelled like dried sunscreen and almost-acrid anti-perspirant. In other words: a wet, hot mess.

"You're going to have to help me," she whimpered, grabbing a rag and dousing it with paint thinner. "How much time do I have?"

"About ten minutes."

"Ten minutes!" She dropped the rag, and he picked it up without missing a beat and began scrubbing off her face. "Oh shit! Why didn't you check on me earlier?"

She caught a glimpse of his gray eyes rolling towards the ceiling, and cut him off before he could respond. "Never mind! Help me get this off so I don't look like I murdered the Grimace."

They did the best job they could before she dashed off to their bathroom. "I'm going to shower, that's definitely not optional right now, I really stink…what am I supposed to wear to this thing?"

"I don't know." He wasn't even in the room and she knew that he was shrugging. "Who cares? Just wear anything."

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes as she cranked on the hot water and jumped in. The last time he had told her that, she had shown up wearing jeans to a party full of designer cocktail dresses and Louboutin heels. Granted, they were very nice jeans, but the hostess still had mistaken her for the deejay.

"Think back to the last time you were at that guy's house. What were the women wearing?"

"I don't know. Dresses?"

That was a start. She ripped open the cap on a shampoo bottle and went to town. "Can you go into my closet and pick something out? Please?"

"Seven minutes."

Mina didn't bother to towel off completely as she ran into the bedroom. He had laid out a dress across their bedspread, and while it wasn't the first one hanging in her closet, it was…far from optimal.

"Kevin!"

He poked his head through the doorway. "What?"

She held up the offending garment. "This is made of cotton."

"So? You look nice in it."

Such sweet, but faulty logic. "Um, also, it's a sundress, it's meant for daytime, and it's way too casual."

"You told me to pick out a dress, I picked out a dress."

"Yes, but—never mind!" She ripped open her closet door, stepped inside, and shuffled frenetically through the hangers before finding it. Seventeen dollars at a consignment shop, and it still was the best purchase she had ever made, besides the sixty bucks to adopt her cat. Pulling it over her head, she called out to him while sweeping makeup and jewelry into a bag. "Grab me some shoes! No wait, grab me the gold heels with the strap across the ankle! The ones that look like they belong to Raye! Please! Thank you! I love you!"

She heard him muttering as she grabbed a few more items before dashing out the door. Without her purse.

* * *

A small pothole in the road caused her to nearly poke her eye out. "Babe, please watch the road, I'm trying to put on makeup."

He wanted to say something, she could sense it, but he refrained from commenting, probably because a few minutes earlier, when he had mentioned that she still smelled a bit like paint thinner, she had torn his eardrums out and ground them to powder before he could roll down the window. She turned her attention back to her tiny compact mirror as she angled her head to catch the fully-cranked air vents. "My hair is going to dry wavy."

"Mina, it doesn't matter."

"If it doesn't matter, then why do I have to go?" She knew in her soul that she was being petulant, but the irritation of rushing was unfairly raising her hackles.

Thankfully, he didn't respond to that, either, but reached forward and turned up the heat.

Her hair did indeed dry wavy, and there were still faint hints of paint clinging to certain parts, like her knees and elbows, and she had only managed to get mascara and some lip gloss on during the bumpy car ride. The supposed stroke of genius of using breath spray to cover the smell of paint thinner turned out to be a bust, and now she smelled like the wino who sat outside the loading dock of her gallery and drank peppermint Schnapps.

And Kevin couldn't take his eyes off of her.

They had arrived before the surprise, thankfully, but he knew she was feeling overwhelmed and intimidated by the way she grabbed his arm when the entered the mansion's foyer. His colleague was not one to conceal his fortune, and his wife's taste rivaled many newly-wealthy rap protégées'. The interior Greek columns were a bit much, along with the indoor pool.

He had forgotten about the surprise party's theme, naturally, because the concept of a birthday party having a theme was so beyond his comprehension that it might as well have been advanced nuclear science. Apparently, it was a red and white party, and the women floated by in gauzy, spangled sheaths while Mina's little black dress stood out like a wayward penny in a candy dish.

She appeared desperately bored as she slumped in a corner of a sofa, drinking out of a champagne flute and pulling out her cell phone to check the time every minute. Her hair spiraled into soft waves around her shoulders like a sunny blonde halo, and her unpainted face glowed with dewy freshness in the soft light. She looked beautiful and natural against the shellacked faces and flat-ironed hair of the other women.

He hoped that she knew that.

He was just about to go and rescue her from misery when he heard his name mentioned from around the corner, and he shuttered back and listened in.

The voice he heard was the host's; his colleague Mark. "So that's Chaston's girlfriend in the black dress. Where do you think he picked her up?"

"I don't know. City college?" He couldn't place the third voice. Nasty bro-laughter followed that statement.

"Street corner."

"No, seriously, I think she's a cashier or something," Mark continued. "Or a waitress. Didn't think he would slum like that."

"I think she said she was an artist." That was John, a younger associate, too new to the game to be a shark.

"Yeah, right, every chick with a camera and a paintbrush thinks they're an artist. You know what she can paint?"

"My nuts?"

"_My_ nuts, you fag." Kevin bristled at the word, and wondered why he even agreed to come to this stupid party. He hated Mark, and even more so now that he was planning his death.

"Still," the voice behind the wall continued. "She's fucking hot, that's for sure. I'd throw a shot right in her cunt."

"You wish."

"No, watch." There was a pause as Mark took a swallow of his drink. "Lemme finish this drink and I'll go and talk her up, and guaranteed at the end of this night, she's thinking about me. By the end of this week, she'll be jumping on my dick like it's the fucking antidote."

"What about Chaston?"

"Fuck Chaston, she'll get sick of him and his holier-than-thou attitude sooner or later, and might as well be sooner. Plus, come on, how long can he put up with some dumb blonde who makes jewelry out of beads and hemp and calls it art?"

_A very long time, thank you_. He had two options at this point: beat the living fuck out of Mark in his own home, which was very appealing, especially with all of the vases and candelabras laying about that would prove to be effective weaponry, and probably get arrested; or step out to the patio for a few minutes to clear his head and think of a plausible excuse to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible. He chose option B.

He was not alone. A young waiter was crouched in the shadows, finishing up a cigarette. "Excuse me, sir," he said apologetically, reaching down to stub out his smoke.

"No, no, you don't have to leave on account of me, please." Kevin sighed and dropped into a cushioned deck chair that he remembered Mark's wife saying was imported from Indonesia. "Stay a bit."

The waiter shrugged and pulled the pack out of his pocket and offered Kevin a cigarette; he shook his head. "So…how's it going?" God, that sounded white.

The young man gave a shrug with his palm up. "Is OK. I should be working late tonight, but it's OK."

"Hmm." Kevin swirled the scotch in his glass. "I do _not_ want to be here," he finally admitted.

The waiter raised his eyebrows. "Sir?"

"All of these people suck." He knew he was dumping on the poor guy, but it was either that or cause a scene inside. "I always knew they sucked, I knew they sucked coming here, they are all-around shitty people who have stupid shitty parties where you have to wear a certain stupid color, and I dragged my girlfriend here even though she didn't want to go and now I'm certain that makes me a shitty person too."

"Do you love her?"

"Yes, very much."

The waiter laughed. "Then you need to make it up to her, sir."

"I know. First thing I have to do is beat the shit out of my co-worker in his own house. Excuse me."

"Wait, sir." He exhaled a plume of smoke and rubbed his palms on the knees of his work pants. "Do you mean Mr. Conway?"

"Yes."

The waiter looked around furtively. "I've worked this place before, sir. The _pendejo _wanted to fingerprint us before we came into his house, and his wife makes us use the bathroom in the garage. You are correct, sir; they are shitty people.

Perhaps I can help."

Kevin turned around and sneaked a quick glance at Mina still sitting in the same place, and now trying to avoid talking to Mark Conway, who was perched on the arm of the sofa and leering down at her. "What do you have in mind, uh—what's your name?"

"Emilio."

"Emilio? Kevin. What's the idea?"

Emilio broke into a sudden grin. "The bartender, Jose, is my cousin, and his girlfriend is a bit of a _puta_, don't tell him that."

Some evil, wonderful feeling was blossoming in his chest. "I think I know where you're going with this, and I like it."

"Piss or spit, sir?"

He watched Mina try to stand, and Mark grabbing at her wrist to pull her back. "Can we do both?"

Emilio shrugged. "We can, and we may do a bit extra. Like I said, anything that comes off of Jose…you would not want to drink it."

Kevin smiled and took a drink. Before he left, he covertly slipped Emilio five one-hundred dollar bills and didn't stay around to hear his thanks.

* * *

Mina could only put up with so much, and when the birthday boy told her that the only regret of having a Ferrari was not having a backseat to take her to, she didn't bother to come up with an excuse before making an exit. She slid the door to the patio open, and spotted Kevin and a young, Hispanic waiter sitting around and drinking with their feet up on the expensive furniture. "So this is where you've been hiding," she said softly, sliding onto his lap. "This party sucks."

"I agree. This is Emilio, by the way. Emilio, this is my girlfriend, Mina."

"Hello."

The young man gave her a shy smile and turned to Kevin. "I knew she was yours, sir. You are different than them, and so is she."

Mina felt her face flushing with a warm glow. "Thank you."

"You look very nice in black, Miss."

Kevin rubbed her knee. "Yes, she does."

* * *

Naturally, they didn't make it to the bedroom when they got home; the front foyer was witness to another rough bout of sex that left them sweaty and panting on the floor.

Mina picked her head up and plucked at the broken strap of her dress. "You tore my dress."

Kevin gulped air and tried to steady himself. "I'll buy you a new one."

She pouted. "It was one of a kind."

He pulled them off of the ground, and lifted her up and carried her to their bedroom, where he tossed her on the bed and parted her knees for another round. "So are you."

* * *

Mark called in sick on Monday.


	22. Are You Kind?

Title: Are you Kind?

* * *

He yelled loudly enough to pull her out of a dead sleep, and she thought briefly of ignoring him, since he didn't sound like he was in extreme pain, which was the only rational explanation for waking her this early.

Slowly, she swung her legs out of bed and tottered to the bathroom, yawning. "What? What is it?"

The shower was going full blast, filling the bathroom with steam. Given the size of the bathroom, that was pretty impressive. "We're out of soap. Can you get me a new bar, please?"

She bit her retort back. _We are partners, and partners help each other, no matter how early._ Usually it was her thing to fall asleep in the shower, or get so comfortable that she didn't want to move out of the heat pocket. "There is soap in there."

Kevin cleared his throat. "That's not soap, that's girl wash, and I'm not using that puffball thing."

She rolled her eyes and opened the closet. "It has to be in bar form?"

"Yes. Please hurry."

Mina pushed aside a stack of towels and grabbed the basket full of soap. They never seemed to specifically buy any, but never seemed to run out, either. Maybe they were breeding, she thought. "You're not going to want the one that smells like chocolate, right?" That one had been a gift of sorts from Raye; during their annual post-Christmas gift dump, she had ended up with the oddly shaped brown lumps before realizing that they were not edible.

"Hell. No."

As expected. "Oh, we still have some left from France. The really good ones."

He hesitated. "What do they smell like?"

She read the label on each one. "Pink peony, rose petal, hydrangea, violet moss…"

"Anything that's not a flower?"

She swallowed. "Apricot vanilla."

"No."

Her hand closed around a plastic bag. "I've got one from Lush. It's called 'Rock Star'." She opened the zip-lock and took a whiff. "OK, never mind, it smells like bubblegum."

"Good call. Keep looking."

She sighed and rummaged around. "Kevin, you're running out of options here."

"Can you buy soap today?"

_What am I, your mom?_ "OK, your choices are flowery France soap, Raye's chocolate regifts, the Rock Star, or Kiss My Face."

He was silent for a moment as he milled over his options. "What's that last one?"

"Kiss My Face. Natural. Organic. Etc."

"Are those the green ones?"

She peeled back the label to take a look. "Yep."

A long, frustrated groan came from underneath the cloud of steam. "It smells like patchouli or something, doesn't it?"

She put the bar to her face and inhaled. "Sort of. Just use the body wash if you're so freaked out."

"Fine, the green one. I'll just smell like a hippie." She tossed the bar over the top of the door. "Thanks."

She yawned again and started shuffling towards the sink. Might as well stay awake, if she was already up. "You know, there's nothing wrong with patchouli."

"Didn't say there was."

"I like the smell of patchouli."

"So do hippies."

"There's nothing wrong with hippies."

"Didn't say there was. I like it when they juggle those sticks on the sidewalk."

"Jerry Garcia happens to be one of my favorite artists. I take a lot of inspiration from his early watercolors."

"Bet you they're _awesome_ on acid."

She rinsed toothpaste foam out of her mouth. "Never mind, I'm going back to bed."

There was a squeaking noise, and she turned to see him clearing the spot off the glass shower door to peek out of. "Aren't you coming?"

She couldn't resist the plaintive look in his gray eyes; sighing, she stripped down and jumped in the shower. Her body was barely wet before he backed her against the porcelain and pressed his mouth on hers, his hands sliding down her naked body.

She broke away and smiled up at him, water running in rivulets down her face. "You're not going to get clean this way."

He bent down, pressing his forehead against hers, and pulled her right leg over his hip. "Nope. I'll get dirty."

She bit his shoulder as he slid inside, and her cries echoed off the glass enclosure as he fucked her to ecstasy.

* * *

They both ended up smelling like patchouli. Not that she minded.

"No, really, can you buy soap today?" She looked up from her sliced bagel and smirked; he was wearing the Jerry Garcia tie she had bought him for Christmas last year.

"Nice tie."

"Thanks. Might as well dress the part. So, soap, please? I don't want to smell like Zach every day."

She cupped his face as he kissed her goodbye. "I should really just let you use the Rock Star."

"You really want me to smell like Serena?"

* * *

When he came home that night, he was barely in the door before she was waving a bag in his face. "Look! Soap! Dr. Crazy's in bar form! Neutral smells! No more waking up Mina at the crack of dawn!"

He kissed her again—they did a lot of that—and put the bag on the counter. "Thank you."

"How was your day?"

He pulled off his jacket and tried to see what was in the oven. "Interesting. Lasagna?"

"Baked spaghetti. What was so interesting?"

He was trying to hide his smile. "The Dow took another dive, I helped Zach buy a hotel in the Caribbean, and Manny from the mail room asked if I wanted to see Phish at Bonnaroo with him and his friend Che. I told him we'd go."

She followed him down the hallway, her mouth hanging open. "Wait, what?"

"Phish. At Bonnaroo. It's cool, Manny said he'd drive."

Mina stopped in the bedroom doorway and watched him undress. "Manny?"

"Think Jason wants to go?"

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

Mina threw her hands up. "You don't even like Phish!"

"Of course I do."

"Name your favorite song."

He undid his tie and hung it back up in the closet. "The one with the twelve-minute jam session in the middle that sounds better when you're high."

"That's like, all of them!"

"Manny said he'd burn me some CDs."

She crossed her arms. "So we are going to Bonnaroo with Manny from the mail room—"

"—and his friend Che—"

"—and his friend Che. All because you smelled like patchouli today."

He kissed her on the forehead as he exited the bedroom. "And because I wore the Jerry Garcia tie."

She followed him back to the kitchen. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

He shrugged one shoulder and opened the oven. "You said Jerry Garcia is one of your major influences. I wouldn't kill me to check him out. I can even wear my tie."

"Jerry Garcia's been dead for almost fifteen years."

He stopped and turned, his glasses slightly foggy from the heat of the oven, and a look of concerned befuddlement on his face. "Wait, then what the hell is Phish?"

Mina could barely blink as she shuffled out of the kitchen, muttering about her upcoming road trip with Manny and Che. She spotted the bag on the counter and went over to open it, and spoke to the peppermint-scented bars inside.

"Where were you this morning to prevent this from happening?"


	23. Sunglasses

She chewed on her straw as she waited, squinting against the bright midday sun. Not a cloud in the sky today, and several passes through her enormous handbag had come up negative for any kind of eye protection. She found five different pots of lip gloss, however; fat lot of good those would do against the sunlight burning away her retinas.

He was on the phone when he arrived, his jacket off and thrown over one shoulder, and paused his conversation to plant a kiss on her forehead.

They started down the sidewalk in stride together. Mina sighed and sipped at her iced latte as she waited for him to finish up. His jacket slid off, and she caught it before it hit the pavement and tucked it under her arm. Without missing a beat, he reached for her drink and took a quick sip before returning it. From the face he pulled, there was too much sugar in it for his taste.

It was getting warm, so she decided to reach up and loosen his tie. Their fingers got tangled as they struggled with the knot.

A flash of piercing sunlight glared off the windshield of a passing car, temporarily blinding her, and she stumbled into a café chair before he caught her and held her steady.

"Hey," she whispered around his conversation. He nodded at her. "Let me use your sunglasses."

He angled the phone receiver away from his mouth. "What?"

"Your sunglasses!" She reached up and plucked them from his face. "Let me borrow these!" She slid them on, and the world became tolerable once again. "Ahh. Hold this," Mina ordered, thrusting the almost-empty cup at him.

He gave her a slightly annoyed stare, but she looked too adorable with the oversized aviators perched on the bridge of her nose for him to complain. She flashed a smile at him and pulled a scarf out of her gigantic bag, which for some reason contained everything but the kitchen sink and her own pair of sunglasses. She tied her blonde hair back, using the scarf as a headband. "Aw yeah. I look rock star now."

Too cute. He rested his elbow on her head as they continued down the sidewalk: Mina sipping on iced coffee, and Kevin trying to end an endless conversation so they could find somewhere to eat. Unfortunately, she was steering him in the direction of that Thai place that always gave him heartburn.

Hours later, he was popping antacids and chasing Darien down the sidewalk, squinting against the sun. Mina had taken off with his sunglasses.

In his usual prickish manner, Darien took the seat in the shade. Kevin grunted. "Switch with me."

Darien glanced over the top of the menu. "Why?"

He shielded his eyes with a hand and fumbled with a napkin. "The sun's in my eyes."

Darien scoffed and popped the menu back up. "Well then wear sunglasses, you idiot!"


	24. The F Word

F-word

Jason leaned back on the couch, having stolen the coveted ottoman, and glanced at the floor before making his statement. "Ray Allen is flipping unbelievable."

"Ray Allen is a, uh, punk-butted mother lover." Darien slapped his knee as the seconds ticked by. "And so are you."

"Anyone need a re-up?" Kevin called from the kitchen. Noah did a quick inventory.

"Uh, yeah. Two—you good, Jase?" Jason nodded and held up his beer bottle. "And one baby drink."

Kevin emerged with new beer and a can of tomato juice. "Will this work?"

Noah threw him a pointed look. "Do you want your carpet to stay white?"

On the television, a whistle blew. Jason yelled something incoherent as Darien leapt to his feet, screaming. "Shi—shoot! You fracking uh, dummies! Switch the flipping screen! And if you don't switch the darned screen, like you should've, then you fu—fishing go over it, not under it, when you're trailing him! Fishing idiots!" He stopped, red faced and panting, and turned to Noah. "Is 'idiots' too much?"

Noah bent down to the floor. "Aja, do you remember what Uncle just said?"

She paused her crayon over the (hopefully not important) sketchpad that Kevin had found in Mina's studio, and looked up at them with those impossibly big brown eyes. "Yidyit."

Noah shrugged. "Guess it's too much."

"Damn-darn! Darn," Darien corrected himself. "Sorry, Aja, Uncle's just gets mad when big guys who are paid millions of millions of dollars to play a game fail to not only understand the fundamentals of the game, but do such a pee-poor job of it that it goes into another overtime. Don't tell Mommy, OK?"

Aja nodded and went back to her crayons. Noah had apologetically appeared for the game with his daughter in tow: Makoto being sick in bed at home, and his parents on vacation in Florida. A frantic call had been put out, but Mina was at a show, Jesse was helping her, Raye was working a weekend with her boss, and Serena probably smelled something fishy and didn't answer her phone. No matter, they assured him. Them's the breaks when you're a dad. "We'll just watch our swearing," Darien promised, and the rest had nodded in agreement.

But by the second overtime, it was very, very hard to do.

Jason howled. "Did you see that, uh, fishing shot? SWISH, baby!"

"ID-I mean, STUPIDS!" Darien yelled, his face reddening again. "You know they've gotta shoot the trey, and you KNOW they're going to go to Stupidhead Allen, so how the fff-fishing heck do you give him a wide open shot?" He settled back. "Bulls, you deserve to fishing lose. Dumb mother lovers. Fish this bull poop."

"D, why are you getting so upset?" Kevin asked. "Allen's the best pure shooter in this league."

"Shut-I mean, be quiet, Kevin. Fishing Masshole. Gently insert it up your fishing colon."

"Whatever, man. He just schooled those rookies. This isn't Florida college ball, and learn to fu--sorry, sorry, switch a screen or go over it. Basketball 101." He took a sip of beer. "Apparently they don't teach these things in fishing Florida."

"Darned straight! Old school, baby! We've got The Truth AND the best shooter ... too bad KG's hurt or else we'd trounce those fishing rookies." Jason looked proud of himself. "Hey, look, I did the whole thing without swearing."

"What do you want, a cookie?" Darien snarled. "Shoot, I still can't fishing believe this. How the hockey stick did their fishing defense just collapse like that?"

"Shit, I still can't believe he made that fishing shot!"

"Jase," Noah said dryly. "You let one through."

"No I didn't. I said 'fish'."

"Not the fish," Darien helpfully supplied. "It was a 'shit'."

"I did not say 'shit'."

"Well, now you've just said 'shit' three times," Kevin said, then caught himself. "Oh shit, sorry!"

On the floor, Aja mumbled something that sounded like one syllable and a short vowel. Darien shot a look to Noah.

"Fish this. I think I have an idea. Kevin, don't you have those white noise headphones? The ones you use on planes?"

He nodded. "I think I know where you're going with this, and I fishing like it."

* * *

Ten minutes later, Aja sported a pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones McGuyvered to fit her small head, and was playing with her crayons in blissful, peaceful silence while a verbal war raged above her head.

"This fucking hurts. I don't think I'm ever going to stop crying."

Jason laughed at Noah's pain. "Allen's the fucking man. Watch, it's gonna be all fucking Celtics from here on out!"

Kevin added his two cents. "Of course, Celtics have got the momentum now. The Bulls are too busy holding their assholes shut to get their fucking game back on. This shit's fucking over."

"Kevin, shut the fuck up." Noah felt better now that he was able to swear. "Fuck this shit! Learn to shoot some damn free throws." He ran a hand through his hair. "If I were the fucking coach, I'd be running their asses to the ground in practice. Suicides for each missed free throw, and the whole fucking team is going to shoot them."

"Shit man, if you ever make us do that..." Darien trailed off.

"Maybe if goddamn bitch-ass Miller could make a free throw," Noah sighed. "It's a fucking free throw! Dribble. Bend. Shoot. Follow through. Aja can fucking make that shot! That's why they call it a fishing 'free throw'."

The guys were laughing at him. "What?"

"You left a 'fish' in," Darien said, grinning.

A few days later, Makoto returned home from the supermarket with Aja in tow.

"What's for dinner?" Noah said, taking one of the heavier grocery bags.

"Salmon," she replied, setting the bags and child down on the counter. "For some reason, Aja kept asking for fish. She's been saying it over and over again for days." She gave him a long, suspicious look. "What's with fish?"

He tried to keep the smile off of his face as he pulled Aja off the counter. "At least it's not another f-word."


	25. Snowball: the proposal

Snowball

What was pissing Raye off the most was that she didn't speak fucking French…or German…or whatever the hell they spoke in this overly-bright hospital in Switzerland. Her feet were cold, she was hungry, and they had plans tonight to have sex in the hot tub of the Swiss chalet while drinking champagne…and then that idiot had to go and break his stupid arm. Now there would be no hot tub sex in the snow, no fondue, no more skiing the Alps, no _nothing_ for the rest of the trip.

She dragged the plastic chair closer to the hospital bed and crossed her arms. Jason was unconscious with his right arm in an air cast and stuck fill of weird sensors and tubes. Once an operating room was available, they would take him in and try and repair his shattered forearm, which from the looks of things, was broken in more than one place.

_Idiot_, she fumed. She was always on him to take more calcium so these stupid things didn't happen, but no, he had to subsist on beer and whatever he could eat with his left hand as he drew with his right. Oh great. Now he wouldn't be able to work when they got home. And probably not be able to feed himself, or do any chores. How would he bathe?

Raye couldn't hold back. "You dumbass," she hissed at her boyfriend's unconscious body. "I told you not to show off! _I'm_ the better skier, anyway! What the hell were you thinking?" The fury was building, and she was on a roll. "Now we're going to have to spend the rest of our vacation in the freaking hospital!" An older gentlemen in the bed opposite of Jason's threw her a look, and she glared back with all her fury. He turned his face to the wall and she continued ranting. "And oh my God, I'm going to have to call your parents and they are going to _panic._ You're making everyone worry, you big stupid asshole!" A tear slipped out of her eye, and she hurriedly brushed it off. "What if you got yourself killed? What would I do? I can't love anybody else after you!"

"Miss?" A nurse called from the doorway in accented English. She held up a clear bag with Jason's ski jacket inside. "I'm sorry—they had to cut it."

Raye sniffed and buried the unshed tears. "Yeah, thanks."

"Does he have passport?"

"I don't know." She pulled the jacket out and felt into a pocket. "I think we left it at the chalet…" There was nothing in the right pocket except a crumpled tissue, but when she wrapped her fingers around it, she felt something hard. She pulled out the wad of tissue and peeled it back.

Buried in the middle was a diamond ring.

Her throat was closing up. She couldn't breathe. The platinum band was filigreed around a clear solitaire, and flanked with two smaller diamonds. Its classic beauty was ageless. It looked antique, and she wondered whose hand used to wear this ring. She would put money on the late Grandma Fisher.

"Are you his wife?"

Raye slipped the ring on her left hand and held it at arm's length. Even under the glaring fluorescent lights, the diamond glittered like a star. "I will be."


	26. Audition

Small pre-Econ snippet.

* * *

"Too short," Darien mumbled at the casting director, and waved the girl away. The next one was a few inches taller, but her face was jacked like a Picasso. "Definitely not." A brunette took the stage, impossibly tall and beautifully tanned, wearing a loose hoodie. "Can you take that off, please?"

She sighed and unzipped the jacket, releasing a pair of perfectly round, obscenely perky tits barely restrained by a black tank top. Darien's cock woke up for the first time in hours. "Can you take that off, too?"

The girl tossed her shiny curls over her shoulder and squiggled out of her tank. Her bra was definitely too small: boobage was spilling out the top of the overworked cups. "Thank you. You're through."

She gathered her clothes and joined a giggly blonde off to the side. Two down, eight to go. "Next, please."

Violet eyes flashed at him across the room, unmistakable in their brilliant color, and he remembered the girl from the lobby. This one was firecracker, and now his cock was screaming. And now she was wearing only leggings. "Can you turn around, please?"


	27. Justin and Kim

Tiny Halloween ficlet! Econ-verse. Cruddy. And I think I spelled "Bieber" wrong every time, and I can't be arsed to look it up.

* * *

"They're going to make you sing."

Jason gave his makeshift bangs another shot of hairspray; the blonde strands were practically a helmet at this point. "They're going to make you bend over."

"Zach is going to make me bend over," Raye corrected, elbowing him over in the bathroom as she wound her own ebony hair around the barrel of a curling iron. She was wearing nothing but a skintight black bodysuit and five inch platform heels: Zach would be walking behind her the entire night. "Darien, too, maybe."

"Darien, definitely." Jason tossed his head. "How does the kid do it?"

Raye put the iron down and picked up a tiny bottle of eyelash glue. "How does Kim not sweat to death in these things?" She pulled at the neckline of her bodysuit. "I should have gone as Pink Dress Kim."

Jason futzed with his hair. "Well I should have gone as Black Vest Bieber. I'm too blonde, I just look like a generic scenster kid." He was wearing black jeans so tight they were practically painted, neon green Nike Dunks, a purple t-shirt, and an aqua hoodie. "No one's going to know who I am."

"The dog tags give it away," Raye said. "And the hat. You never wear the brim like that."

"I wonder if Kevin's going to dress up."

Raye rolled her eyes while trying to stick a falsie eyelash to it and nearly poked her own eye out. "If he doesn't, he's the lamest lame-o that ever lived. I'll kill him. And he promised me he wouldn't wear a suit-costume."

Jason grunted in reply and adjusted the crotch of his jeans. "I think I'm chafing already."

* * *

Serena squealed when she opened the door. "OH MY GOD! Jason, you HAVE TO SING! I'll tell Darien to set up the karaoke machine!"

Raye gave her a quick once-over. "Your boobs. Nice."

Serena grinned and struck a pose, nearly toppling over in her gold and pink platform stilettos. "I knew you'd appreciate it! Look! Custom Manolos!" She adjusted her huge white wig. "Darien wouldn't dress as Louis XVI; he said he won't wear tights, not even for me." Sexy Marie Antoinette pouted briefly before perking right back up. "But look at you! Zach's going to have a heart attack, and oh my GOD! The real Kim was supposed to come tonight, but I think she got dumped or something because she had to cancel."

"Good, I don't think Zach could handle that much bodacious ass in one night." Darien appeared at her elbow, grinning. "Besides, you're much hotter than Kim Kardashian, Raye."

She surveyed his costume: a tuxedo with cummerbund, a top hat, a red and black cape, and a white eye mask. "What the hell are you?"

Darien shrugged. "I thought I'd look like The Phantom of the Opera, but he's got a different tuxedo."

"You look like Mr. Incredible crossed with a waiter," Raye said as she brushed past him and into their penthouse. "Your spiders are purple and have googly eyes."

Serena giggled. "I was going to decorate it like a haunted house, but I didn't want to scare my little girl!" She knelt down and held out her arms, and a black and orange fairy witch ran into them, grinning from ear-to-ear. "You are so adorable! Auntie could just eat you!"

Aja hugged her around the neck. "I can't find kitty!"

"Oh," Serena tutted. "Luna's probably hiding because there's so many people here!" She lowered the little girl to the floor. "How about we get some purple monster punch and then go look for her, OK?"

Aja nodded and allowed herself to be led away by Sexy Marie Antoinette.

Like a hapless prey drawn to the lure of an anglerfish, Zach immediately gravitated directly behind Raye. "I'm going to say something that's going to make you slap me."

Raye raised an eyebrow; she knew how to play this game. "So, is Amy here?"

At the mention of her name, he tore his eyes away from Raye's ass with a scowl. "Yes."

"Are you guys…talking? Or…what? What's the deal?"

Zach ignored the question and turned to Jason. "Bieber!"

"Yep," Jason said behind his Wayfarers.

"You're going to sing, right?"

"Yeah, what the hell," he conceded. "What are you?" Zach seemed to be clad in his normal navy hoodie and faded jeans.

He smirked. "I'll put it on again once Aja goes to bed. She doesn't like it too much."

Faux-Kim procured a drink and wandered the crowd until she heard her name called. She closed her eyes momentarily to gather her bearings, and then spun around.

"What the hell?"

Kevin shrank back from her screech. "It's not a suit!"

"I know!" Raye titled her head to get a better look. "So what is it?"

"You don't know? Really?"

"No."

Kevin ran a hand through his hair. "I knew this was a bad idea."

"No, it's a good one!" Mina interjected. She was clad head to toe in yellow, including a fluffy scarf. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy updo. "Really, you don't get it, Raye?"

Raye took in Kevin's outfit, which was jeans and a white T-shirt with some arty design on it. "You're a normal human being?"

"I'm Jason."

"Oh." She let out a single cough of a laugh. "Oh, nice try. You seriously just look like a person."

"Jason's a person," Kevin shot back defensively.

"No I mean—forget it." She turned to Mina. "Explain."

Mina grinned. "I'm sunshine!"

"Oh God," Raye turned on her stiletto. "You guys fail at costumes."

Makoto and Noah were much better: the mother of the little witch was obviously dressed as a big witch, but Noah was wearing all khaki and stuck straw around his head. Raye raised an eyebrow in appreciation: these two looked like they had put some effort in. "So you're her broom?"

"I'm Aja's broom," Noah corrected. "Hopefully she'll pass out soon and stop riding me."

Almost like clockwork, she did. Makoto carried the dozing fairy witch upstairs and returned with a baby monitor. "How much of that punch did she drink?"

"Not enough to keep her up," Darien said, unscrewing a bottle of Belvadere and dumping it in the punchbowl. "Now the party can start!"

Raye was three cups of purple spiked punch down when she felt a sudden, familiar stinging sensation on her ass. "Zach! You cock!" She spun around and gaped at the figure covered completely in skintight green spandex.

The green man posed. "GREENMAN!" He ran off cackling, his curly hair crinkling bumps underneath the spandex.

Raye rubbed her buttcheek and glanced at Amy. The petite girl's eyes were following the green blur, but she would occasionally look away. Raye knew what was up. She reached over and playfully tugged on the end of Amy's trailing sleeve. "Renaissance chick?"

"Oh." As always, Amy looked slightly uncomfortable starting a conversation. Raye kept her face neutral; she wouldn't make this hard for her. She needed this. "No, I was trying for Ophelia, but my hair's not long enough." One hand reached up and brushed the cropped black strands. "I'm still not used to it."

Raye lifted one shoulder and leaned on the wall next to her. "I got a chin-length bob once. It was weird whenever I washed my hair because I wasn't used to not using a whole handful of shampoo."

Amy smiled shyly, and Raye felt a burning sense of accomplishment. "I don't need to blowdry."

"Trust me, that's a good thing." She punctuated that statement with a huge swallow of purple punch. "And I think you look great. Better than Mina and Kevin. Those two half-ass it every year."

"Well, they might surprise you one year," Amy said. "Kevin will wear a chicken suit or something."

Their eyes met, and the two girls dissolved into giggles. After a minute, Raye caught her breath. "Amy, would you be one of my bridesmaids?"

The girl's breath caught as her eyes popped open. It seemed impossible for someone to get that red, Raye thought. "I, uh—are you sure? I mean-we've only been—I don't—"

"I promise I won't make you wear anything ugly."

Amy's head bowed and she stared at the surface of her drink. "I'd love to."

Raye's heart resumed beating; it wouldn't do to have anyone see the normally unflappable Raye becoming unnerved from a simple request. "Well, joke's on you; I lied about the ugly dress."

"Can I reneg—"

"No," she interrupted, and then grinned.

The next morning, Raye poured herself another cup of coffee while browsed through Amy's email, complete with photos from the previous night: Green Man and the Tuxedoed Mask wrestling on the floor in the middle of Serena's impeccable living room, Aja riding on Noah's shoulders when she woke up at midnight and rejoined the party, an extremely drunk Justin Bieber singing "Baby" on the karaoke machine, a ball of sunshine crashed out on a chaise lounge, Green Man wearing Sexy Marie Antoinette's wig. Raye only remembered a fraction of the activity thanks to the purple monster punch, but her butt was sore from Darien and Zach pinching it all night.

Amy was missing from the photos, since she had been the one taking them. Raye tapped her fingers against her desk; that didn't seem fair to her. The next party, Raye would take the pictures; all she needed was an occasion. She reached for her mouse and clicked "reply".

_So, girls night this Friday? We need to talk dresses._


	28. Apples to Apples

Waaaay Pre-Econ as an angst-antidote. Don't do drugs, kiddies.

* * *

In a darkened kitchen the size of a small gymnasium, a young man was hard at work at a delicate task. A low hum of chatter and low music came from the closed door, and the drone increased to a blare as it swung inward and admitted a tiny visitor.

"Kevin, what are you doing?"

Sixteen-year-old Kevin Chaston jumped and nearly cut off his pinky finger with the paring knife as it sliced through the entire side of the apple and clacked off of the marble countertop. "Shit," he muttered as he rolled the ruined apple aside. He spared his younger sister, only six years old and toting a stuffed unicorn, barely a glance as he reached for another apple. "Go away."

"You said a bad word!" Serena preened, hopping on her toes. Her Mary Janes were covered in silver glitter and matched the silver trim of her puffy white party dress, and two bows the size of salad plates festooned each of her white-blonde pigtails. Around her neck hung a silver chain and star-shaped locket with a half-carat white diamond in the middle, and a matching charm bracelet slid up to her elbow. From head to toe, her outfit probably cost more than most people earned in month.

By comparison, Kevin had changed into gym clothes the minute he was excused from the party.

He reached for another Red Delicious from the mostly decorative fruit bowl (the fruit changed every three days, regardless if any was eaten or not) and cut a gouge from the top. Zach had left him an eighth of AK-47 but forgotten to leave him any papers, and he was too paranoid to keep any bowls or pipes on him. He tested several books in his father's office before concluding that the only thing that might do was a pocket Bible, and even he wasn't that sacrilegious. Zach would have smoked through the Old Testament with barely a blink. There was a brief contemplation over a Coke can and a roll of foil, but the ultimate decider was that a chopped-up apple and an emptied Bic pen aroused far less suspicion than a crushed soda can with a side full of burnt holes.

Kevin had just passed his last drug test as part of his probation, and in his adolescent, underdeveloped reptile-brain, there was no better way to give a huge "fuck you" to everyone than to get baked off of his ass and watch shitty movies the rest of the night.

"Go away."

"Are you having an apple? Can I have one?"

"No, go away."

Serena's lower lip jutted out, and she stomped over to the door in her sparkly shoes and pushed it open. "MOMMY! Kevin won't give me an apple and he's being mean!"

Their mother appeared in the doorway: a dark, icy blonde silhouette in the yellow light from the parlor. "Give your sister an apple."

"She just ate."

"Now."

Kevin shoved the knife through the apple like he was murdering it. "Here."

"Mommy, he's doing it meanly!"

"Kevin."

He picked up the apple slice and handed it to her.

Satisfied, his mother gave a nod and disappeared.

"Thank you, Kevin." Serena bit into apple slice as he reached for a third juicy red victim. "What are you doing?"

"Cutting apples." The stem was decapitated, and he busied himself scraping out the middle.

"You're doing it funny."

"Go away."

She ignored him. "You should use the funny hole-maker that Cissy uses."

"I know what I'm doing." The knife gouged a hole through the side. "Fuck!"

Serena trotted over to the door again. "MOMMY! Kevin said the EFF WORD."

The shadow appeared in the doorway again. "Kevin, you _will _be aware of your language in front of your sister."

"Sorry," he muttered, and began working on the fourth apple. His sister didn't leave when his mother did.

"Can you play with me?"

"No."

"I wanna play Candyland."

"No. Go play with the other kids."

"I don't wanna play—"

"Swallow."

She swallowed a mouthful of apple and continued. "I don't wanna play with them! I want to play with you!"

"I already said no, now go away."

"I'm going to tell Mommy!"

"Tell her," Kevin griped. He pulled the knife away and marveled at his handiwork. While the others attempts had ended as fruit salad, this one had a perfect cavern. He rummaged through the drawers for an ice pick, and stuck it through the side of the shiny red skin.

He realized Serena was still in the room. "Will you beat it?"

"Will you play with me after you have your apple?"

Christ, no. "No."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"You're so meeeean." She hit him on the leg with her unicorn. "You never want to play with me."

That was a lie, since he was tasked with entertaining her while her nanny was on vacation. He drilled the pen through the hole and raised the whole thing to his lips to clear the airway.

Serena was gazing up at him with pure innocence—with an undercurrent of pure brattiness-in her baby blue eyes.

"Will you please leave me alone?"

"I wanna play with you!"

"I'll give you a hundred dollars if you go away."

"I don't want a hundred dollars; I want you to play Candyland!" She stomped a glittery shoe and dropped her arms to her sides, her tiny fists clenched into balls. Her small face turned the color of a strawberry. "I'll scream if you don't play with me _right now_!"

Clearly, he was fucked either way. He scooped up the apple, knife, and pen, flung his baby sister into the pantry, and locked the door behind her.

"MOMMY!"

He made it to his room before her screams stopped.

The index from the pocket Bible was used to get through the rest of his grounding.

* * *

"Kevin, it's your turn in Mario Party."

"In a minute." He blew on his fingers to warm them up, and stabbed at the top of the apple. Snow fell on the red, waxy skin, and he contemplated the idiocy of trying to hack together a pipe outside of his parents' house, in the middle of a blizzard. "Zach, are you sure you can't—"

"No way, man," Zach giggled as he hopped around the back patio in his hoodie. "I'm way too high. It'd be like a salad shooter."

"Slap-chop."

"What?"

"Who cares," Darien griped as he rubbed his gloved hands together. "Chaston, get your shit together and cut the damn thing."

"This was your idea." It had been, but Kevin was especially susceptible to the suggestion after his cousin arrived with new Russian mail-order bride in tow.

Serena crossed her arms. "We're waiting for you, Kevin."

"In a minute."

"Raye is getting crabby."

"Raye can fucking wait."

She huffed, and turned to the opened kitchen door. "MOM! Kevin's swearing at me!"

"She can't hear you."

The response was faint. "Stop it, Kevin."

Zach and Darien exploded into giggles. "You just got yelled at by your Mom!" Zach chortled, never breaking pace. Snowflakes were collecting in sodden bunches in his sandy blond curls.

"Hurry up!"

"Would you shut up?" Kevin snarled as his knife missed and cut a chunk of fruit out of the apple. "Damn it!"

"You're terrible at this."

"Eat a dick, Chiba."

"Don't be mean to my husband," Serena crossed her arms.

"He was my friend before he was your husband."

"Jason's going to be mad that you're leaving him out."

"Jason has a cold. I don't want that shit." The apple was beyond repair. He chucked it in the snow. "Let me start over."

Serena huffed. "No! It's your TURN. You have to take your TURN." She stomped her Kate Spade glitter ballet flat and glared up at him. "So come inside right now!"

"No."

"Get in the house!"

"How old are you?"

"How old are _you?_ You're the one out in the snow smoking weed like a stupid high school kid!"

"So is your husband."

"It's not my husband's turn at Mario Party, so I don't care!"

"Shut up, Serena."

"Don't tell me to shut up!"

"I just did."

Her lips pressed together before she swiveled around and stomped into the kitchen. "Mo-oom! Kevin's outside making an apple bong!"

He caught her by the collar of her blouse and flung her into the pantry.

"DARIEN! Kevin locked me in the pantry! Kick his ass!"


	29. The Perils of Candybat

Another fic for Thalia's Halloween Challenge

* * *

At quarter past eight at night, the woods bordering the highway were appropriately misty and spooky underneath a full moon, and Noah still had another twenty miles to go.

He took his eyes from the road long enough to glance at the shoebox balanced on the passenger seat. A slight scritching noise came from inside the box.

"Relax," Noah groused at the box. "We're almost there."

The box responded by scritching again.

He flicked on his high beams as the road wound into a curve. "You're not getting another cricket because I don't have any. You're lucky I caught the first one." He lowered his voice even though the occupant of the box had no comprehension of English or any other human language. "I should just dump you on the side of the road and call it a night."

Deep down, Noah knew he couldn't do that, even if he wanted to. If he started with the white lies, they would eventually turn into colorful ones, and after enough of those, his daughter wouldn't trust him and would start purposely dating guys like Darien to get back at him. He could not let that happen as long as he drew breath.

The box let out a short, squealing screech that made him jump.

Twelve miles to go.

* * *

The drama started right when he brought the little black-and-orange witch fairy back from Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood. She was one of the few children walking the streets, an observation he shared with Val and Ben from next door. They told him that most families chose to Trick-or-Treat at the shopping mall, since it provided a level of safety that suburban neighborhood, obviously resplendent with child molesters and careening cars, lacked. Plus the unsafe candy could potentially contain poison or peanuts or razor blades. The mall also had a costume contest and the winner got coupons for the indoor mini-golf course.

In Noah's mind that was the most retarded thing he had ever heard. Some of his happiest childhood memories were of him and his brothers running amok after dark while dressed as mutant ninja turtles and ripping out their baby teeth with Now and Laters. No wonder kids today were such pussies, like the boy in Aja's day care class who cried whenever she wore red.

He steered the tiny, LED-blinking witch fairy back up their front path, which was lined with fiberglass tombstones and spiderwebs, and a fake skeleton propped against the mailbox that his father had pilfered from an abandoned closet in the biology department of the university. The jury was still out on whether it was real or not. That year, Noah had dressed it a certain _persona non grata_'s Cavaliers jersey. An older, taller witch (a woman wearing a witch hat and a black apron that smelled like coffee) was waiting in the doorway for them. "I gave away all the treats. I think they know to stop here before going to the mall."

Makoto thought that she was easing parental fears about poisoned homemade baked goods by wrapping each leftover brownie and cupcake in plastic boxes and ribbon, and sticking it shut with a label from Grinders. His assumption that the paranoid breeders dumped the treats was proved baseless as their home became a popular target for Trick-or-Treaters of all ages, and had let to several special orders for Halloween parties.

"All of them? Even the caramel ones?"

"Especially the caramel ones." She leaned over and smiled at her daughter. "What did you get this year, baby? Any Almond Joys for Mommy?"

Before Aja had a chance to answer, a small black object swooped down and crashed against the doorframe with a dull, meaty thump. It fell to the grass and flapped a few times before laying still. Aja rushed over and bent down to examine it, the orange and purple lights on her wings blinking. "Mommy, a birdie!"

Noah gently pulled Aja out of the way and bent down to survey the damage. Behind him, Makoto gasped. "Uh, yeah…that's not a bird," he finished.

"Honey, come close to me," Makoto pulled the little girl halfway inside the house. "Is it…?"

"Yep." He reached for a twig and poked it gently. Makoto shrieked as it began flopping around frantically, its membranous wings beating against the grass as it tried to right itself.

"Noah stop! It probably has rabies!"

"It doesn't have rabies," he said. He had had enough of parental paranoia for one night. "It probably got disoriented from all the lights we have up."

"Bats are blind!"

"No they're not." He straightened up and dusted off his hands. "It'll be OK."

"Can it fly?"

Noah bent down and studied the small winged animal. Its chest pumped up and down as it gasped for breath. Its dark, furry body was no bigger than a large egg, and if not for the threat of rabies, he would have picked it up and tried to stretch out its wings to see how far they would go. He had never actually touched a bat before. "I'm not sure."

Aja broke away from her mother and shoved in front of him. "Is the bat OK, Daddy? I can get bandaids for him."

"I don't think he needs bandaids." The bat flopped over a few times and then started crawling across the grass on its wings. "Look, he's going to fly away now."

It didn't fly away. It crawled to the edge of the paved path and seemed to run out of gas.

"Daddy!" The witch fairy's voice had already taken on a hysterical edge. "Why can't he fly?"

"I don't know." He reached for the twig again and gave the animal an experimental poke. It clacked its teeth at him, but made no effort to get off the ground. "Uh-oh."

"Is it injured?" Makoto asked from behind him.

"I'm not sure. It's not like, broken or anything; it's just lying there. Maybe it has a concussion."

"_Meu deus_, just what we need. Is it going to D-I-E? Should I get the broom?"

"I-D-K."

Makoto made a face. "Eye decay? What are you talking about?"

"No, not—I don't know! I'm trying to tell you that I don't know."

"Why didn't you just say that?"

"Because I thought we were spelling! You spelled out 'die'."

At that last word, the fairy witch's face dropped and her brown eyes filled with tears. "He's gonna diiiiiie!" She pressed her fists into her eyes and began wailing. The bat squawked. "Daddy, nooooooooo, save him! Take him to the hospital!"

Noah folded his daughter into a hug while keeping one eye on the bat. "We can't, baby. The hospital is for people."

She sniffed. "Take him to the animal doctor! Aunt Mimi took her cat there and they made him better please Daddy."

_Dammit_. Why did Mina have to tell Aja about the veterinarian when her stupid cat got the raging shits? She could have just gotten a new cat.

"Please _papa _I don't want him to die! Take him to the doctor please please!"

How could he say no to that? He fetched a shoebox and a gardening glove and scooped the injured bat as gently as he could. The bat fixed a beady black eye on him and tried to chew through the leather glove with an emotion that could only be described as pure insane rage. Maybe it _did_ have rabies. Makoto was waiting for him in the kitchen with the phone to her ear; she pulled it away to talk to him. "The vet in town only sees domestic animals. Oh wait—" She bent her head and listened for a moment. "Do we know if it's a protected species?"

Noah dropped the box on the table and went to the sink to wash his hands. "Really?"

"Oh, right." She brought the phone back up. "We're not really sure. It's small and brown and um…angry."

Noah busied himself with poking holes in the lid of the shoebox while Aja anxiously hung on his knee. Makoto wrapped up the phone call and joined them at the table. "The lady at the Humane Society said that we can take it to a wildlife rescue." She tapped on the smartphone for a bit. "Oh, here. It has the address."

"Where?"

Her face was grim. "Off of route 9 near the turnpike."

Noah exhaled. "You're kidding me."

"Noah." His wife folded her hands together and gave him that big, emerald-eyed stare that she knew he couldn't resist. "It would make Aja feel better."

He let one of his hands fall down to Aja's soft curls. "I know." The box on the table started scritching as the bat wiggled around in his new confinement. "What if the thing C-R-O-A-K-S while I'm driving?"

"Just ignore it."

"I get to turn around if it does."

"No, take it in!"

Noah stopped his search for his keys. "Wait, what?"

She crossed her arms. "You're going to turn around if it makes noise? Just ignore it and keep driving!"

"No, I don't mean 'croaks' like making noise! I mean 'croaks' like it dies!"

Aja started wailing again like a fire alarm.

* * *

They let her pet the box a few times to say goodbye, and then Noah was on the road with a gimpy bat in a Nike shoebox instead of settling down to pop a beer and gorge on his daughter's candy. Makoto had made him a bagel sandwich to eat on the way, but it was a shoddy substitute for banana Laffy Taffys. Each mile that passed only served to increase his rage at the small rodent. "Why are you flying around in October, anyway? Don't you hibernate? Did you miss that memo or something?"

The bat screeched, clearly offended. And then didn't stop. Noah gritted his teeth and tried to concentrate on driving, not an easy task since he was advised not to play the radio, lest he scare the damn bat, again.

It kept screeching all the way to the gas station where he stopped to refuel. A cricket was chirping in the grass nearby, and under the fluorescent halogen lights, Noah had an idea.

The unfortunate insect was slipped into the box and stopped chirping shortly after. It shut the bat up, at least for a while.

The drive was long and boring, and started getting spooky after he left the highway and turned down a heavily wooded country road. Even though he was a grown adult, every horror movie that Noah had seen was now merging in his head and filling his mind with the most macabre scenarios known to man. No doubt there was a chainsaw-wielding psychopath at the end of this road; who else would live at the end of nowhere and take care of wild animals? "If it comes down to it," Noah muttered to the box. "I save myself."

The bat scritched in reply.

"Oh, shut up. Next time hit the back of the house so that I'm not even aware of your presence."

The end of the dark road produced not a ramshackle shanty decorated with human skulls, but a parking lot and what looked like a ranger station. Noah read the sign as he turned in: _US Fish and Wildlife Service_—and immediately felt like an idiot.

The light was on, and inside an older man wearing a puffy vest and jeans was definitely not toting a chainsaw. "Mr. Radway? Ken Frost. I think I spoke to your wife."

Noah followed the ranger to a back room. It was lined with cages like a pet store, and Noah couldn't help but gawk at the fauna that were contained inside. An owl swiveled its head and glared at him from between the bars. At least five cages were occupied by gray squirrels, and a raccoon paced in circles in a large dog crate in the corner. A brown snake coiled around a log in a terrarium and flicked its tongue out at Noah as he passed the tank.

"Can I take a look?" Ranger Frost pulled on a leather glove.

"Oh yeah," Noah handed the shoebox over to him. "Sorry about making you come all this way."

The ranger shrugged. "I had to check on the raccoon anyway. She has an abscess on her gums that was getting nasty." He pulled the bat out and held it close to his face. The tiny creature shrieked and beat its wings against his gloved hand.

"He wasn't that active before. I think he has a concussion from flying into my front door," Noah heard himself say. A small voice that sounded like Darien mocked him in his head. _What are you, a bat doctor?_

Ranger Frost stretched out one wing. "Doesn't look like anything's broken. I'll feed it and see how he's doing tomorrow. He should be able to go back out, then."

"I fed it a cricket."

"And he ate it? Oh, well; that's a good sign."

"It was a gas station cricket."

"They don't discriminate." The ranger launched into a explanation of the feeding habit of common brown bats, including how many insects they ate each year, and then started telling him about a new fungus that was wiping out a bunch of them, and probably wouldn't have stopped if Noah hadn't pulled out his phone.

"Can I take a picture of it? My little girl won't be able to sleep until she thinks it'll live."

"Sure. Wait, let me get the eyedropper; she'll think it's medicine." Noah snapped a picture of the bat snarling at the end of the eyedropper.

"Hey, thanks man. She'll think I'm a hero."

Ranger Frost smiled at him and tucked the bat back into the box. "I'm sure she already thinks that."

* * *

Most of the porch lights were out by the time Noah arrived home. Makoto was sprawled on the couch watching the end of _Halloween_, her hair damp and smelling like coconut. He plunked down next to her and picked up Aja's pumpkin bucket.

His wife leaned against his arm and kissed him. "Thanks for the picture. She wouldn't sleep until she knew that Candybat was OK."

"Candybat?"

"His name was Candybat. She drew a picture of him." She nodded towards the crayon scribbling on the coffee table. Noah glanced up and continued his search.

"Is that me?"

"The blue blob? Yes. You're driving him to the hospital. The red blob is Santa Claus and the green one is Tinkerbell. So is Candybat going to be OK?"

Noah tossed plastic trinkets and organic dried fruit chips out of the bucket. "If he's not, we never tell her. Speaking of candy," he shoveled out a half dozen red boxes of raisins. "Where the hell is it?"

Makoto sighed. "I ate the Almond Joys and the rest is…not so good. The other moms at daycare were saying something about peanut allergies, but I thought that meant they were going to give away gummies."

He had no choice but to pop open the box of raisins. "I hate parents."

His wife smiled at rubbed his knee. "Some people are really good at it."


	30. Bras

Pre-Econ, drabble challenge

* * *

Makoto grimaced as the gold and brown straps dug painfully into her back. "Put it on the last hook!"

"It _is_ on the last hook," Mina said from behind her. She gave the strap another tug; Makoto gasped in pain. "Suck it in more."

The tall girl's breath was knocked out of her again as her friend forced the bra strap over her back and fastened it shut. Her breasts—full, round, perky D-cups—were barely tethered by the leopard-print C-cups. She cursed the stylist for forgetting about the most generously endowed Sugar when she placed the order. The stupid _puta_ always remembered to size up and take in the waist of "Clio's" lacy panties, but must find some sick pleasure into forcing Makoto into corsets and bras a size too small. She windmilled her arms, and her left nipple spilled out of the cup. "This is ridiculous! I can't dance in this!"

"Here," Raye said flatly from her perch on the purple chaise lounge. She reached in her bag and pulled out a flat beige object. "Nip shield. Just stick it on. I don't want it back."

"Thanks." She unpeeled the adhesive cover and positioned it on her breast. They seemed to be a bit more swollen than usual, and new, deep blue veins ran across the top. Mina covered them with pancake makeup before they got dressed.

Raye glared Mercedes out of her way and stared in the full-length mirror at her reflection. "So what are you doing tonight?" Her violet eyes darted between Makoto's barely restrained breasts and her own lithe body.

Makoto shrugged. "Noah got us a room at the Meredith."

"Ooh," Mina cooed, tossing her hair. Her black lingerie hugged her curves like an embrace. "Fancy."

"Must be making some now," Raye assessed, running her finger under her eye to smooth the concealer. "Good for him."

Makoto shrugged. "At least one of us has a real job."

"This is a real job," Mina said. "Maybe not the one we want right now, but it's still real."

Raye was giving her a patented sideways smile. "Don't pretend you don't enjoy having a fan club, Makoto. Besides, you can just do what I do and quit after graduation."

"Showtime, ladies," the club manager called from the hallway. The Sugars rose and packed up, Raye taking a few more moments to admire herself.

A knot of fear squirmed in Makoto's stomach. She hadn't told her friends about withdrawing from college yet, and about the days ticking closer to her visa expiring. She couldn't even take a deep breath to calm herself down, because that damned bra was cutting into her ribcage and making breathing damn near impossible. _Deal with it later._

He was there, in the audience, dressed nicer than usual…probably Jason's influence. Makoto felt the nerves drain out of her as she melted under his gaze; she couldn't even feel the ache of her too-small bra. Something was off, because she couldn't manage her trademark pull-ups past five, but the crowd seemed not to care. Raye was working her infamous flexibility, Mina was winking and flirting with the front row, and the sound system didn't crap out on them. Their redheaded Sugar had caught the attention of a professional baseball player, and he invited them to a party in his suite after the show.

"Are you sure?" Mina called from the lobby of the Meredith, giggling and stumbling towards the private elevator with a bottle of Cristal in her hand.

Makoto zipped her hoodie and smiled as her date arrived with their bags. His hair was mussed, and he had changed back into the awful jeans she wished he would get rid of. He saw her and made his way over, his brown eyes soft and full of adoration. This was a million times better than the catcalls of strangers, the gropes of wealthy men, the sweat and bravado of professional athletes and musicians. He could look at her, and her worries about her visa, and school, and the suspicious swelling of her breasts dwindled away to quiet whispers. He could drown them out.

She decided that she had just performed her last show.

"Yes, I'm good," Makoto called to her friend as Noah took her hand, and she believed it.


	31. A Yuppie Goes Camping

For Elvis :)

* * *

"This," Noah announced, hauling the tent poles out of his trunk. "Is going to be fun."

"What do we do first?" Kevin said, popping open his trunk.

Noah peeked inside: six person tent, collapsible chairs, butane stove, sleeping bags more appropriate for ascending Everest than crashing in the woods for a weekend, one-person kayak, two-person kayak, water purifier, GPS, knives, binoculars, tent poles…all of it brand new.

"Kevin," Noah said slowly. "Did you just go into REI and buy one of everything?"

"Well, yeah." He pulled out a solar charger and a flashlight the size of a fire hydrant. "Isn't that what you do when you go camping?"


End file.
